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THE SENSES 



AND 



rHE INTELLECT. 



BY 



ALEXANDER BAIN, A.M. 




LONDON: 
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. 

1855- 



v \ 



LC Control Number 




tmp 



96 025777 



PREFACE. 



rPHE object of this treatise is to give a full and 
systematic account of two principal divisions of 
the science of mind, — the Senses and the Intellect. 
The remaining two divisions, comprising the Emotions 
and the Will, will be the subject of a future treatise. 

While endeavouring to present in a methodical 
form all the important facts and doctrines bearing 
upon mind, considered as a branch of science, I have 
seen reason to adopt some new views, and to depart 
in a few instances from the most usual arrangement 
of the topics. 

Conceiving that the time has now come when 
many of the striking discoveries of Physiologists 
relative to the nervous system should find a re- 
cognised place in the Science of Mind, I have devoted 
a separate chapter to the Physiology of the Brain and 
Nerves. 

In treating of the Senses, besides recognising 
the so-called muscular sense as distinct from the 
five senses, I have thought proper to assign to Move- 
ment and the feelings of Movement a position pre- 
ceding the Sensations of the senses ; and have 
endeavoured to prove that the exercise of active 
energy originating in purely internal impulses, inde- 



VI PREFACE. 

pendent of the stimulus produced by outward im- 
pressions, is a primary fact of our constitution. 

Among the Senses, have been here enrolled and 
described with some degree of minuteness the feelings 
connected with the various processes of organic life, 
— Digestion, Respiration, &c. — which make up so 
large a part of individual happiness and misery. 

A systematic plan has been introduced into the 
description of the conscious states in general, so as to 
enable them to be compared and classified with more 
precision than heretofore. However imperfect may 
be the first attempt to construct a Natural History 
of the Feelings, upon the basis of a uniform descrip- 
tive method, the subject of mind cannot attain a high 
scientific character until some progress has been 
made towards the accomplishment of this object. 

In the department of the Senses, the Instincts, or 
primitive endowments of our mental constitution, are 
fully considered ; and in endeavouring to arrive at 
the original foundation, or first rudiments, of Voli- 
tion, a theory of this portion of the mind has been 
suggested. 

In treating of the Intellect, the subdivision into 
faculties is abandoned. The exposition proceeds 
entirely on the Laws of Association, which are 
exemplified with minute detail and followed out into 
a variety of applications. 

London, June, 1855. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 



CHAPTER I. 



DEFINITION OF MIND. 

PAGE 

i. Definition stated ........ i 

2. Explanatory remarks ..... . . 2 

(1.) Consciousness the first attribute of mind . . ib. 

(2.) Action a part of mind . . . . ib. 

Mental actions are guided by feeling ... 3 

Exclusion of powers of nature . . . ib. 

„ of certain animal functions. . . 4 

Spontaneous movements not excluded . . ib. 

Volition the term for true mental actions . . 5 

(3.) Thought or Intelligence ib. 

Implies Discrimination . . . . ib. 

Associating of ends with means .... ib. 

Intelligence distinct from Feeling and Volition . 6 

3. Classifications of mental phenomena .... ib. 

Division into Understanding and Will . . ib. 

Intellectual Powers and Active Powers . . ib. 

Dr. Brown's classification ..... 7 

Sir William Hamilton's . . . . . ib. 

Mr. Morell's ib. 

Dr. Sharpey's ....... ib. 

4. Plan of the present work ...... 8 



CHAPTER II. 

OF THE NERYOUS SYSTEM. 

1. Connexion of mental processes with bodily organs . 

2. Proofs that the Brain is the principal organ of Mind 

(1.) Local feelings during mental excitement 
(2.) Effects of injury of the brain 



10 
ib. 
ib. 
11 



vm 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



(3.) Products of nervous waste increased by excitement ib. 

(4.) Connexion of size of brain with mental energy . ib. 

(5.) Specific experiments on the nerves . . ib. 

Parts of the nervous system . . . . . ib. 



OF THE NERVOUS SUBSTANCE. 

Nervous substance of two kinds, white and grey 
Nerve fibres and nerve vesicles 
Connexion of fibres with vesicles 
Size of nerve fibres .... 
Size of vesicles ..... 



OF THE NERVOUS CENTRES. 

5. Enumeration of parts of the Cerebro-spinal centre 

6. Detailed description 

(1.) The Medulla Oblcmgata 
(2.) The Pons Varolii 
(3.) The Cerebrum . 

Cerebral Hemispheres 
Smaller masses of the cerebrum 
Corpora Striata . 
Thalami optici . 
Corpora Quadrigemina 
Ventricles of the Brain 
(4.) The Cerebellum . 

Owen's classification of the parts of the Brain 

7. Internal Structure of the Brain 

White part of tlie Brain 
Three systems of fibres 
Grey matter qftlie brain 
Its distribution . 

8. Plan of Structure indicated by the arrangement of white 

and grey substance . 



OF THE CEREBRO-SPINAL NERVES. 

9. Nature of the ramifying nerve cords 
Fibres and Funiculi . 
Vessels ..... 
Branching and Conjunction of nerves 
Origins or Roots of the nerves . 
Termination of nerves 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. IX 

FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

PAGE 

10. Subject of Function . . . . . . . 36 

Functions of the Nerves. 

11. Division into Spinal and Cerebral Nerves . . -37 
A nterior and posterior roots of Spinal Nerves . . ib. 

12. Function of a nerve is to transmit influence . . -38 
Experimental proofs . . . . . . -39 

13. Property of conduction belongs to all the white matter of 

the nervous system ....... 40 

14. Sentient and M otor roots of spinal nerves . . ib. 

15. Cerebral Nerves . . . . . . . .42 



Functions of tlie Spinal Cord and Medulla Oblongata. 

16. The Nerve Centres in general .... 

17. Spinal Cord ........ 

Necessary to sensation and movement in the trunk and 

extremities of the body ..... 
A centre of movements not voluntary . 
Experimental proofs ...... 

18. Automatic or reflex actions and their centres . 

(1.) Movements in Digestion .... 

(2.) Movements in Respiration .... 

(3.) Winking of the Eyes ..... 

(4.) Muscular tone ...... 

Experiments on the tonicity of muscle 



43 

44 

ib. 

45 
ib. 
46 
47 

48 
50 
51 
52 



Functions of the lesser grey centres of the Brain. 

19. Uncertainty of the functions of these bodies . . . 53 
Functions of the Cerebral Hemispheres. 

20. Experiments on the convolutions . . . . ib. 
Enumeration of Functions . . . . . 54 

Functions of the Cerebellum. 

21. Harmonizing and co-ordinating the locomotive move- 

ments ......... ib. 

Experiments of Flourens . . . . . . 55 

Importance of the white matter of the brain . . .56 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



22. 
23- 



24. 



25- 



Of the Nerve, Force and the Course of Power in the Brain. 

PAGB 

Nerve force is of the nature of a current . . -57 

Analogy between it and electricity does not amount to 
identity ......... 58 

A closed circuit not necessaxy .... ib. 

Waste of nerve fibre by the act of conduction . ib. 
Nerve force derived from, the common source of natural 
power 1 , the Sun . . . . . . -59 

Impropriety of looking on the Brain as a Sensorium . 60 
A current action is involved in every exertion of the brain 6 1 



BOOK I. 

MOVEMENT, SENSE, AND INSTINCT. 

Reasons for including Appetites and Instincts in the depart- 
ment of the Senses ........ 65 

Arrangement of Book I. . . . . . .66 

CHAPTER I. 

OF SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY AND THE FEEDINGS OF MOVEMENT. 

1. Feelings connected with Movement, a distinct class . 67 

Their consideration to precede the five Senses . . ib. 



OF THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM. 

Muscular Tissue . 

Structure of Voluntary Muscles 

Size of Muscular fibres 
Nerves of Voluntary Muscle 
Sensibility of Muscle 

Classification of muscular sensibilities 
Irritability or Contractility of Muscle . 

Classes of muscular stimuli 
Tonicity, or Tonic Contraction of muscle 

Connected with the spinal cord 



67 
68 
ib. 
6 9 
70 
ib. 

7i 
ib. 

72 
ib. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XI 



PROOFS OF SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY. 

Movements anterior to, and independent of Sensation 
Proofs that there are such movements . 

(i.) Tonicity of the muscles .... 

(2.) Permanent closure of the sphincter muscles 

(3.) Activity maintained by involuntary muscles 

(4.) Act of wakening from sleep 

(5.) Early movements of infancy 

Activity of young animals in general 
Meaning of ' freshness' 

(6.) Activity under excitement 

(7.) The active temperament 

(8.) Growth of Volition .... 

Regions of Spontaneous Activity. 

The muscles act in groups, or systems 
Locomotive apparatus 
Vocal organs ..... 
Movements of the face, tongue, and jaw 
Special aptitudes of animals 
Spontaneity in health and in disease . 



73 
ib. 
ib. 
ib. 
74 
75 
76 

77 
ib. 

78 

19 

80 



ib. 

81 
82 
ib. 
ib. 
83 



OF THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

8. The Natural History of the Feelings a part of the science 

of Mind 83 

Method and order of description . . .84 

9. Classification of Feelings of Movement . . . . ib. 

Distinction among feelings as regards intelligence 85 

I. Of Organic Muscular Feelings. 

10. Forms of muscular pain . . . . . . ib. 

Agent and change in the substance . . .86 

Character of the feeling as Emotion . . . ib. 
The delineation of emotion .... ib. 

Acute pains in general . . . . '87 

Expression of pain . . . . . .88 

Instigation of emotional outbursts . . . ib. 

Character of acute pain as regards Volition . 89 

The delineation of volitional peculiarities . . ib. 

Relations with Intellect or Thought . . .90 

Class of spasms and cramps . . . . . -91 



xu 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



ii. Feelings of muscular fatigue . 
Antecedent of the state 
Feeling, or Consciousness 
Expression 
Relations to Volition 
Relations to Intellect 



12. 

13- 



14 
15 



17- 
18. 

19. 

20. 



21. 



22. 
23- 



24. 
25. 

26. 
27. 



II. Of the Feelings of Muscular Exercise. 

Feelings proper to the muscular system 
Exertion unaccompanied by movement 

Physical state of the muscle 

Consciousness . 

Volitional peculiarities 

Intellectual aspect . 
Examples of dead tension 
State of the muscles under movement 
16. Slow movements 

Gradual increase and diminution of movement 
Quick movements 
Feelings of interrupted movement 
Sudden loss of support 
Passive movements 
Physical enjoyment associated with the muscular tissue 



III. Of tlte Discriminative or Intellectual Sensibility of 

Muscle. 



Basis of muscular discrimination .... 
Varieties of difference in muscular action 
Feeling of degree of force expended 
Cases of the sense of graduated exertion 

Feeling of Momentum 

Appreciation of Weight .... 

Discrimination of the degree of contraction in a muscle 

Feeling of Linear Extension ; Size 

Situation ; Form ...... 

Discrimination of velocity of movement 

Mathematical and mechanical properties of matter per 

ceived through muscular sensibility 
Sir W. Hamilton's distinction between the locomotive 
faculty and the muscular sense 



9i 

92 

ib. 

93 
ib. 

95 



ib. 
9 6 

ib. 

91 
98 

99 
100 
101 

ib. 
102 
103 
104 
105 
106 
107 



. ib. 


. 108 


. ib. 


109 


no 


. ib. 


• 113 


. 114 


. 115 


. 116 


• ii7 


e 

. ib. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. Xlll 

CHAPTER II. 

OF SENSATION, 



Sensations of the five Senses 
Common or general sensibility 
Propriety of constituting the feelings 

into a class of sensations 
Emotional and intellectual Senses 



of Organic Life 



FAOB 

119 

120 

ib. 

121 



SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

1. Classification according to locality, or seat . . .122 

2. Sensibility of Bones and Ligaments . . . . ib. 

Organic Sensations of Nerve. 

3. Nervous pains . . . . . . . .123 

4. Nervous fatigue; Ennui ...... ib, 

5. Feeling of the healthy and fresh condition of the nerve 

tissue . . . . . . . . .125 

Organic Feelings of the Circulation and Nutrition. 

6. Thirst; Starvation; pleasures of pure animal existence . 126 
Feelings of Respiration. 

7. Respiratory process . . . . . . .127 

Pure and impure air . . . . . . .128 

The Lungs ......... ib. 

8. Feelings of pure air : Freshness; feelings of Relief . 129 

9. Feelings of insufficient and impure air ; Suffocation . 130 

10. Feeling of Cold . . . . . . . .131 

Cold a stimulant . . . . . . . .133 

11. Feelings of Heat . ....... ib. 

Sensations of the Alimentary Canal. 

12. Digestion offers all the conditions of a sense . . .134 

13. Objects of the Sense : — Materials of food .. . '.-. 135 

14. General view of the Organs of digestion . . .136 

15. Summary of the Physiology of digestion . . . 137 

16. Alimentary Feelings: taking of food and healthy digestion 139 

17. Nausea and Disgust . . . . . '. .141 

18. Feelings of deranged digestive organs . . . .143 



XIV 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



Feelings of Electrical States. 

19. Electric and Yoltaic shocks .... 

20. Electrical state of the Atmosphere 

21. Baron Keichenbach's experiments 

SENSE OF TASTE. 

i. Bodies acting on the sense of Taste 

2. Organ of Taste; — description of the Tongue . 

3. Local distribution of the sensibility of the tongue 

4. Mode of action in taste .... 

5. Sensations of Taste ; — complex sensibility of the tongue 

6. Order of Classification 

7. Relishes 

8. Disgusts 

9. Sweet tastes : — descript 

10. Bitter tastes 

11. Saline tastes 

12. Alkaline tastes . 

1 3. Sour, or acid tastes 

14. Asti-ingent tastes 

15. Fiery tastes 

16. Intellectual aspect of tastes 



ion of feeling of Sweetness 



145 

146 

ib. 



SENSE OF SMELL. 

1. Objects of Smell ...... 

2. Development of odours .... 

3. Diffusion of odours ..... 

4. Organ of Smell : — description of the Nose 

5. Action of odours ...... 

The presence of oxygen necessary to smell . 

6. Sensations of smell : — their classification 

7. Eresh odours ...... 

8. Close or suffocating odours .... 

9. Nauseous odours ...... 

10. Sweet or fragrant odours: — sensation of sweetness 

11. Bad odours ....... 

12. Pungent odours ...... 

13. Ethereal odours ...... 

14. Appetizing odours ..... 

15. Flavour ....... 

16. Importance of the instrumentality of smell . 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XV 



SENSE OF TOUCH. 

PAGE 

1. Position assigned to touch by physiologists . . . 1 7 1 
Touch an intellectual sense . . . . . .172 

2. Objects of Touch ....... ib. 

3. Organ of touch : — the Skin 173 

Structure of the papillae . . . . .175 

Functions and vital properties of the skin . . .176 

Mode of action in touch . . . . . .177 

Sensations : — Soft touch . . . . . .178 

Pungent and painful sensations of touch . . .179 
Sensations of Temperature . . . . . .180 

Other painful sensations of the skin .... ib. 

Intellectual sensations : — Impressions of distinguishable 

points . . . . . . . . .181 

Weber's observations . . . . . ib. 

Sensations of touch involving muscular feelings . . 185 
Weight ........ ib. 

Hardness and Softness . * . . .186 

Elasticity ....... ib. 

Roughness and Smoothness . . . . ib. 

Increase of sensibility by movement . . . 187 
Clamminess . . . . . . . 188 

Persistence of tactile sensations . . .189 

12. Qualities of Extension and Solidity .... ib. 

13. Distance, Direction, Situation, Eorm . . . .192 

14. The senses all accompanied with activity . . .193 

15. Touch concerned in handicraft operations . . .194 

16. Power of touch to substitute sight .... ib. 

17. Subjective feelings of touch . . . . .195 



4- 

5- 
6. 

7- 
8. 

9- 
10. 



11. 



SENSE OF HEAKING. 

Objects of hearing 

The Ear 

External ear . 

Tympanum 

Internal ear, or Labyrinth 
Action of the parts of the ear in the sensation of sound 

Uses of the muscles of the ear 
Sensations of Sound ; their classification 
Quality (Emotional) : Sweetness in sounds 



6. Intensity, Loudness: Suddenness 



195 
196 

ib. 

ib. 
198 
199 
201 
202 

ib. 
204 



XVI 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



7. Volume, or Quantity . 

8. Pitch, or Tune .... 

9. Waxing and waning of sound 

10. Complexity; Discord and Harmony 

1 1. Clearness, or purity 

12. Quality (Intellectual, or Discriminative) 

13. Direction ..... 

14. Distance ..... 

15. Articulate form .... 

1 6. Duration of an impression of sound 



SENSE OF SIGHT. 

1. Objects of Sight ...... 

Modes of Reflection of Light . 
Transparency and opaqueness . 

2. The Eye 

Appendages of the eye 

Globe of the eye 

Coats of the eye . . . . 

Iris, Ciliary processes, Ciliary ligament 

Ciliary muscle .... 

Humours of the eye 

Muscles of the eye .... 

3. Conditions of perfect vision 

(1.) A sufficiency of light 

(2.) Formation of the image on the retina 

(3.) Minute size of ultimate divisions of retina 

4. Adaptation of the eye to vision at different distances 

The change not dependent on external muscles 
Action of the ciliary muscle 
Movements of the iris .... 
The alteration of the eye-ball is for near distances 
Of Binocular Vision : — Wheatstone's experiments 



Erect vision from inverted images 



5 
6. 

7. Sensations of Sight 

8. Sensation of mere light 

9. Artificial lights . 

10. Colour 

1 1 . Harmony of colours 

12. Lustre . . 

13. Optical and muscular feelings combined 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XV11 



14. Motion: — spectacle of moving objects . 

15. Visible movements enter into intellectual imagery 

16. Sensations of distance from the eye 

17. Form, outline, apparent magnitude 

18. Solid effect 

19. Position ..... 

20. Permanent imagery of forms 
Emotional effect of largeness ; — the sublime 



239 

242 

ib. 

243 

245 

246 

ib. 

ib. 



CHAPTER III. 



OF THE APPETITES. 








1. Appetite a species of Volition . . . . .249 


Enumeration of Appetites . 






ib. 


2. Sleep ........ 






250 


3. Exercise and Repose .... 






. ib. 


4. Thirst and Hunger .... 






• 251 


5. Appetite of the Sexes .... 






• 254 


6. Accustomed routine of life .... 






ib. 


7. Appetite liable to give false indications 






ib. 



CHAPTER IT. 
OF THE INSTINCTS. 

1. Definition of Instinct . . . . . . .256 

2. Enumeration of instinctive or primitive arrangements . ib. 

OF THE REFLEX ACTIONS. 

3. Enumeration of automatic, or reflex actions . . .257 

4. Reflex action generated in the operation of the senses . 258 
Dr. Carpenter's view of sensori-motor excitement . . 259 



OF THE PRIMITIVE COMBINED MOVEMENTS. 

5. Interest of the inquiry into primitive arrangements . 261 

6. The locomotive rhythm . . . . . .262 

Proofs of the instinctive origin of this combination ib. 

7. This implies an arrangement for reciprocating each limb 263 

6 



XV111 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



8. Also an alternate movement of corresponding limbs 

9. Lastly, a vermicular propagation of movement 

10. Associated or consensual movements 

Associated actions of the two eyes 

1 1 . Law of harmony of state of the muscular system 

1 2. One sense instinctively acting for another 



265 

267 

ib. 

268 

270 
271 



OF THE INSTINCTIVE PLAY OF EMOTION. 

13. Movements and effects diffused hy Emotion . . .272 
Miiller on 'Movements due to the passions of the 

mind' ......... 273 

14. Sir Charles Bell on the movements of the face . . 275 

15. Muscles of the face concerned in expression . . .276 

Muscles of the eye-brow . . . . . ib. 

16. Muscles of the nose ....... 278 

17. Muscles connected with the movements of the mouth . ib. 

18. Effects of pleasing and painful emotion on the face . 280 

19. Expression may arise from the relaxation of muscles . 281 

20. Depressing action of certain emotions . . . .282 

21. Stimulation of the organs in Astonishment . . . 283 

22. Effects of emotion not muscular ; Lachrymal secretion, 

Blushing, &c. . . . . . . .284 

Causes of Laughter . . . . . . .285 

Nature of the movements in laughter . . . .286 

287 



23 

24 

25 



Convulsive outburst of grief , 



OF THE INSTINCTIVE GEKM OF VOLITION. 

26. Volition a compound of spontaneity and something else 289 
Miiller on the first commencement of voluntary acts . ib. 

27. Spontaneity alone insufficient to constitute voluntary 

power . . . . . . . . .291 

Voluntary command of the organs not instinctive . . 292 

28. States of feeling impel to some action or other . . 293 

29. Coincidence of a state of feeling and a suitable action at 

fii'st accidental . . . . . . .294 

A pi'ocess of acquisition connects the two together . 296 

30. Spontaneity and the volitional impulse of feeling belong 

to all animals ........ ib. 

31. Summary of the theory of volition .... 297 

32. Instinct of self-pi-eservation only an example of volition 298 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



XIX 



OF THE SPECIAL ACTIVITIES AND INSTINCTS. 

Tlie Voice page 

33. Anatomy of the organ of voice ..... 299 

34. Muscles of the larynx ....... 302 

35. The laiynx as an instrument of sound .... 303 

36. The articulate voice . . . . . . .306 

Vowel utterance ...... 307 

Consonants — their formation and classification . ib. 

37. Mental phenomena of voice ...... 309 

38. Sensibility to degrees of vocal tension . . . .310 

39. The voice an organ of the expression of feeling . . 311 



BOOK II. 



INTELLECT. 



General characters that distinguish the Intellect 



315 



CHAPTER I. 

LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

1. Statement of the law ....... 

MOVEMENTS. 

2. Effects of repetition on the spontaneous and instinctive 

actions ........ 

3. Acquisition of combined movements 

4. Nature of the inward process that brings about con 

tiguous adhesion . . . . . 

5. Conditions that govern the rate of acquisition 

(1.) The command already acquired over the organs 
(2.) The force of adhesiveness natural to the con 
stitution ...... 

(3.) Repetition, or continuance 

(4.) Concentration of mental or nervous energy 

(5.) Bodily strength ..... 

(6.) The spontaneous activity of the system 

b 2 



318 



319 
321 

3 2 4 

326 

ib. 

327 

ib. 

ib. 

328 

3 2 9 



XX 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



6. 

1> 
8. 

9- 

10. 



ii. 

12. 

13- 



14. 

15. 
16. 

i7. 

18. 



FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT. 

Transition from the actual to the ideal 
What is the seat of feeling persisting after the fact? 
The persistence of states of feeling is their intellectual 
property ........ 

This persistence had to be assumed in previous dis- 
cussions ......... 

Mode in which a persisting state of feeling actuates the 
brain ......... 

Seat of revived impressions the same as that of the 
originals ........ 

Proofs of this doctrine ..... 

Case of sensations ....... 

Emotions and passions ...... 

ftevivability of the collateral effects of emotional states 

Less enduring states of mind sustained by their 
accompaniments . 
The diseased persistency of impressions 

Objection to the stimulus of terror 
Bearings of the foregoing doctrine 
Association of Feelings of movement 
Examples from the acquirements of Speech 
Circumstances favouring the cohesion of 
movement ..... 



feelings 



of 



3 2 9 
ib. 



33° 

33i 

33 2 

333 
ib. 

335 

33 6 

ib. 

337 
338 

339 

ib. 

340 
34i 

342 



SENSATIONS OF THE SAME SENSE. 



ip. 

20. 
21. 



2 2. 



2 3- 



Association of sensations of the same sense with one 
another ...... 

Effect of repetition on individual sensations 
Sensations of Touch .... 

Complexity of tactile properties 

Notions acquired by touch 

The use of Touch to the Blind . 
Sensations of Hearing .... 

Supplanting tendency of the voice 

The ear has to be formed to individual sounds 

Successions of sounds, — a musical ear 
Sensations of Sight ...... 

Distinguishing peeuliarities of the eye 

Impressions of Light and Colour 



343 
344 

ib. 

ib. 
346 

347 

ib. 

ib. 

ib. 
348 
349 

ib. 

35° 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXI 

TAGS 

Outline Forms : — their cohesion in the mind . 352 

Peculiarities of individual character on this point ib. 

Three different kinds of forms . . . • 353 

24. Combination of Colour and Form; the pictorial mind . 355 

25. Difference between natural and stimidated adhesiveness ib. 

26. Successive growth of visible aggregates . . 356 

27. Circumstances affecting the adhesive growth of visible 

images 357 

28. Superior retentiveness of the organ of sight . -358 

SENSATIONS OF DIFFERENT SENSES. 

29. Movements with Sensations : — language of command . 359 

30. Muscular ideas with sensations : — Architectural associa- 

tions ......... 360 

31. Sensations with sensations . . . . . .361 

32. Rate of adhesiveness in heterogeneous association . . 362 

OF EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. THE MATERIAL WORLD. 

33. Metaphysical problems connected with Perception . ib. 

34. Perception of the Distances and Magnitudes of External 

bodies ......... 363 

Perceptions resulting from the eye alone . . ib. 

35. Distance and Magnitude imply other organs than the eye 364 

36. Meaning or import of Extension . . . . -367 

37. Extension the result of an association of mental effects . 368 

Sir William Hamilton's views . . . ib. 

Perception and Belief of the Material World. 

38. Question as to the independent existence of matter . 370 

(1.) No knowledge possible except in reference to our 

minds ........ ib. 

(2.) The sense of the external implies our own energies 37 1 
(3.) Our experience connects certain changes of sensa- 
tion with the consciousness of certain move- 
ments . . . . . . . 372 

(4.) Experience furnishes the materials of our belief 

in what actually takes place . . . • 373 

(5.) Suggestions of a plurality of senses . . . 374 
(6.) The experience of mankind in general leads them 
to form an abstraction to express the uniform 

concurrence of sensations with movements . 37^ 



XX 11 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



40. 



41. 



43- 



44. 



45- 



Process of perceiving the true Magnitude and Distance of 
an object from the ocular adjustment and extent of 
image on the retina . . . . • 37^ 

Wheatstone's experiments . . . -377 

The increased inclination of the eyes suggests 

diminished size ...... 378 

The appreciation of Distance follows the estimate of 

magnitude . . . . . . . -379 

Dr. Reid on the signs of distance furnished by colour 

and appearance ....... 380 

Perception of Solidity through the presentation of dis- 
similar pictures to the two eyes . . . .381 

A mental association suggests a picture different 

from the actual impi-ession made on the eyes 382 
Perception of solidity implied in the perception of 

distance ......... 383 

Question as to the line of visible direction of objects . 384 
Localization of bodily feelings . . . . -385 

Our own body is to us an external object . . ib. 

The localizing of feelings is acquired . . ib. 

Discrimination of differences in sensations . . . 386 

Emotional and volitional discrimination . . 387 

Intellectual discrimination of states emotionally and 

volitionally alike ....... ib. 

Depends entirely on association . . . 388 

Sir William Hamilton's theory of the inverse relation 

between Sensation and Perception . . . 392 



ASSOCIATES WITH EMOTION. 

46. The element of Emotion may be allied with objects . 393 

47. In remembering states of emotion there is often a per- 

verting influence, arising from present emotion . 395 

48. Association of special emotions with objects . . 396 

Objects of affection, or attachment . . . 397 

Associates with irascible passion . . ib. 

Overflowings of egotistic emotion . . 398 

Love of money ...... ib. 

49. Alisonian theory of Beauty ..... t'6. 

Distinction between primitive associated effects ib. 

Sublimity and beauty of sounds . . . 399 

Associated effects of forms .... 400 
Refining effect of remoteness . . . .401 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XX111 

PAGE 

50. Reading of Emotional expression .... 401 

The meaning of a smile or a frown acquired . ib. 
Acquired antipathies ..... 402 

ASSOCIATIONS OF VOLITION. 

51. Acquired nature of voluntary power . . . .402 
Things implied in the voluntary command of the moving 

organs ....... ~. . 403 

Notes of observations on the early movements of two 

lambs ......... 404 

52. Voluntary acquisition exemplified by the case of 

Imitation ........ 405 

(1.) Imitation wanting in early infancy . . .406 

(2.) The power is progressive ..... 407 

(3.) Efforts of imitation are at the outset irregular . . ib. 
(4.) Imitation of the child's own acts by others . 408 

(5.) Imitation follows spontaneity . . . . ib. 

(6.) It progresses with the acquired habits . . 409 

(7.) Depends on the delicacy of the senses . . ib. 

Importance of gaining the attention . .410 

NATURAL OBJECTS AGGREGATES OF NATURAL QUALITIES. 

53. External objects affect us through a plurality of senses . 411 

Characters determined by sensuous adhesiveness ib. 
The naturalist ...... ib. 

54. Objects having uses, or related properties . . .413 



NATURAL AND HABITUAL CONJUNCTIONS STILL LIFE. 

55. Variegated imagery of the world .... 

Importance of a retentiveness for Colour . 
Adhesion for imagery in general 
Special preferences of the artist 

56. Aggregates constituted by artificial representations 

Maps, diagrams, sketches 

57. Conjunction of objects with their scientific properties 

SUCCESSIONS. 



414 
ib. 
ib. 

415 

416 

ib. 
4i7 



58. Successions and changes in nature . . . .418 

Successions that go in cycles . . . . ib. 
Successions of evolution . . . . .419 



XXIV 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



59. Natural persistence of mental movements once begun 

Influence of this in the recovery of successions 

60. Successions of cause and effect .... 

Case of human actions as causes 

61. Action and reaction of man on man 

62. Our knowledge of living beings made up in part of those 

successions ........ 



PAGB 
420 
421 

ib. 

ib. 

4 2 3 
424 



MECHANICAL ACQUISITIONS. 

63. Conditions of mechanical acquirement . 

Natural conditions .... 

64. Method of mechanical training 

Recruits in the army 

The apprentice in handicraft employment 



4 2 5 

ib. 

426 
427 
428 



VOCAL OR LINGUAL ACQUISITIONS 

65. Acquisition of vocal music 

66. Acquirements of speech 

67. The mother tongue 

68. Foreign languages 

69. Oratorical acquisition . 



428 

43° 

43 2 

433 

ib. 



CONTIGUITY OPERATING IN SCIENCE. 

70. Machinery or embodiment of Science . 

The abstract sciences .... 
The forms used in science are representative 

7 1. The experimental and concrete sciences 

72. Logic, Grammar, Mind, &c. are verbal sciences 



435 
ib. 

437 
438 
439 



BUSINESS OR PRACTICAL LIFE. 



73. The higher departments of industry . . . • 439 

74. Management of human beings . . . . .440 

Necessity of being alive to the effects produced . ib. 



ACQUISITIONS IN FINE ART. 



75- Nature of Fine Art ; — qualities of the artist. . .440 

(1.) Affinity for the material of the art . . .441 

(2.) Special sensibility for the effects called artistic . ib. 

(3.) An artist a mechanical workman . . .442 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXV 



HISTOKY AND NARRATIVE. 



FEEBLENESS OF IMPRESSION. 

6. Cases where a very faint impression is identified 

7. Identification of feelings of organic life . 

Acuteness in discerning organic states 

8. Identification of Smells ; test of differences of power in 

this particular 

9. Hearing; the effect of familiarity . 

10. Identification of objects dimly seen 

1 1. Acuteness of sense in the Indians 

12. The scent of the dog . 



PAGE 



76. Transactions witnessed : — their mode of adhesion . . 443 

77. Matters related in language . . . . . .444 

OUR PAST LIFE. 

78. Peculiar feature in the train of each one's existence . 445 

79. Mode in which our own actions are recollected . . ib. 

80. Composite stream of our past life ..... 447 

81. General observations on the force of contiguous adhesion 448 

Difficulty of obtaining an absolute measure of the 

force ........ ib. 

Superior plasticity of early years . . . 449 
Distinction of temporary and permanent adhe- 

cramming ib. 



CHAPTER II. 

LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

1. Statement of the law . . . . . . . 451 

2. Mutual relation of Contiguity and Similarity . . ib. 

3. Under Similarity there is supposed a defect of likeness . 453 

4. The obstructives are either Faintness or Diversity . 455 

5. The power of reviving like in the midst of unlike an 

important point of intellectual character, varying in 
individuals ........ ib. 



456 
457 
458 

ib. 

459 

460 

ib. 

461 



XXVI 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



SIMILARITY IN DIVERSITY. SENSATIONS. 

13. Likeness with unlike accompaniments the principal field 

of examples of the law of Similarity 

14. Movements; — case of Speech .... 

15. Sensations; — Organic Life ..... 

16. Tastes ........ 

1 7 . Identity of a common effect from different causes ; Classifi 

cation ........ 

18. Touches ......... 

19. Hearing. Musical and articulate identifications in the 

midst of diversity ...... 

20. The ear concerned in our retentiveness for language 

Similarities in language heard by us . 

21. Sensations of Sight ...... 

Identification of colours ; lustre 
Generalization of forms .... 

Language as written .... 

Peculiarities of the verbal mind in general 
Artistic forms ...... 

Scenes of nature, &c. .... 

Visible movements ..... 

22. Properties common to sensations of different senses 



462 
463 
465 
466 

ib. 
469 

470 

475 
ib. 

476 
ib. 

478 

479 

480 

481 

ib. 

482 

484 



CONTIGUOUS AGGREGATES. — CONJUNCTIONS. 

23. Popular classifications of natural objects 

Pe -classifying of things already classified 

24. Things affecting a plurality of Senses . 

25. Objects identified from their uses; mechanical invention 

26. Natural objects identified on their scientific properties 

chemical discoveries .... 

27. Classifications of the naturalist ; Linnaeus 

Analogies struck by Goethe and Oken 

28. The Animal Kingdom .... 

Reform in the classification 
Discovery of the homologies of the skeleton 
Character of Oken ..... 
Influence upon knowledge of true identities 



486 
488 
489 
490 

494 
496 

497 
ib. 
ib. 
ib. 

498 

499 



PHENOMENA OF SUCCESSION. 

29. Various modes of succession ..... 500 

Of identities some are real others illustrative . 501 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXV11 

PAGE 

30. Identification among the different classes of successions . 501 

Cyclic successions . . . . . .502 

Successions of evolution ..... 503 

31. Successions of Human History ; historical comparisons . 504 

32. Institutional comparisons ; the science of Society . . 506 

33. Scientific Causation; Newton's discovery of universal 

gravitation ........ 507 

Characteristics of the intellect of Newton . .511 

REASONING AND SCIENCE IN GENERAL. 

34. The different processes of science ; — Abstraction . .512 

35. Induction: the inductive process demands the power of 

Similarity . . . . . . . .514 

Inductions fitted into previously established 

formulas . . . . . . 517 

The Laws of Kepler . . . . . ib. 

36. Inference, or Deduction . . . . . . 519 

Ileal and syllogistic, or formal, deduction . . 520 
Given a law, to find new cases for its application 521 
Given an obscure case, to find a clear and known 

parallel . . . . . . .522 

Franklin's identification of Lightning and elec- 
tricity ....... ib. 

37. Reasoning by Analogy . . . . . -523 

BUSINESS AND PRACTICE. 

38. Inventions in the arts : — James "Watt . . . -525 

39. Administration of public and private business . .526 

Extension to new cases of devices already in use 527 
The identification must turn on the relevant cir- 
cumstances of the case . . . .528 
Law: Medicine ...... ib. 

40. Persuasion . . . . . . . . . 529 

ILLUSTRATIVE COMPARISONS AND LITERARY ART. 

41. Comparison an aid to intellectual comprehension . . 530 

"Writings of Lord Bacon . . . . 532 
4 2. Comparisons for ornament and effect : — the Orator and 

Poet 533 

43. Figures of speech implying comparison . . . 534 



XXV111 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



FINE ART IN GENERAL. 



44. Some of the Fine Arts involve the intellect largely . 535 

45. The less intellectual Arts . . . . . -536 

Functions of intellect in the Fine Arts generally 537 

SIMILARITY IN ACQUISITION AND MEMORY. 

46. Similarity, by tracing out repetitions, shortens the labour 

of acquiring new subjects ..... 538 

47. Examples from Science . . . . . -539 

48. Business acquisitions . . . . . . .541 

49. Case of the Artistic mind ...... 542 

Contiguity tested only by entire and absolute 

novelty ....... ib. 

50. The Historical Memory 543 



CHAPTER III. 

COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

I. There may exist in any one case a plurality of associating 

bonds ......... 544 

Statement of the law . . . . . . • 545 



COMPOSITION OF CONTIGUITIES. 

2. Contiguous conjunctions: — complex Avholes and concrete 

objects ....... 

3. Connexions with locality and with persons . 

4. Connexion of things with uses 

5. Successions : — the succession of Order in Time 

6. Language ....... 



545 
546 
549 
55o 
552 



COMPOSITION OF SIMILARITIES. 



7. Increase of points of resemblance 

8. Mixture of language and subject matter 



553 
554 



10. 



MIXED CONTIGUITY AND SIMILARITY. 

The identities struck by pure similarity are afterwards 

recovered by similarity and contiguity mixed . 555 

Influence of proximity in bringing on a difficult identifi- 
cation ......... 556 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXIX 

THE ELEMENT OF EMOTION. 

PAGB 

11. An emotional state gives its character to the trains of 

recollection . . . . . . . • 557 

12. The purely intellectual bonds are made subordinate in 

emotional natures . . . . . . • 55^ 

INFLUENCE OF VOLITION. 

13. Modes in which volition may operate in resuscitating 

the past ........ 559 

(1.) By the stimulus of excitement . . . ib. 

(2.) By controlling the intellectual attention . . ib. 

THE SINGLING OUT OF ONE AMONG MANY TRAINS. 

14. Concurrence of other suggesting circumstances with an 

object before the view . . . . . .562 

15. Selection of one out of many properties of the same object 563 

OBSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

16. Recollections obstructed by the mind's being possessed 

with something different . . . . .564 

17. Conflict of different modes of viewing the world . . 565 

Guessing of conundrums ....... ib. 

ASSOCIATION OF CONTRAST. 

18. Contrast not an elementary principle of association . 565 
Made up of Contiguity and Similarity, aided by emotions 566 

19. Present ideas suggest their opposites .... 568 

20. The force of similarity tends to consistency . . . 569 

CHAPTER IV. 

OF CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

1. There is in the mind a power of original construction . 571 

MECHANICAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS. 

2 . Complex acts acquired by taking the simple acts separately 572 

VERBAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS. 

3. Constructiveness in Speech ; conveyance of meaning . 573 

Element of volition in constructiveness . . 574 

4. Fulfilment of the conditions of grammar, &c. . -575 

Necessity of a large stock of vocables to choose 

from . .576 




XXX TABLE OF CONTENTS. 

FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT. 

PAGE 

5. Construction of inexperienced ideas of weight, range, &c. 577 

CONSTRUCTIVENESS IN THE SENSATIONS. 

6. Forming by combination new states of Organic feeling . 579 

7. Tactual constructions ....... 580 

8. States of Hearing the result of a combining effort . .582 

9. Constructiveness in Sight ...... ib. 

CONSTRUCTION OF NEW EMOTIONS. 

10. Elementary emotions of human nature must be expe- 

rienced ........ . 584 

Changing the degree of a known feeling . . . 585 

11. Combining of two emotions so as to bring out a third . 586 
Occasions for the exercise of this power . . 587 

CONCRETING THE ABSTRACT. 

1 2. Given the abstract properties of an object, to conceive the 

object itself ........ 587 

13. The farther abstraction is carried, the more difficult it is 

to remount to the concrete . . . . -589 

REALISING OF REPRESENTATION OR DESCRIPTION. 

14. The machinery of representation . . . . .590 

15. Verbal description ....... ib. 

16. Maxim of the describing art in general . . .591 

To combine a type with an enumeration . . ib. 

CONSTRUCTIVENESS IN SCIENCE. 

17. Constructiveness in attaining Abstract ideas . . . 592 

18. Induction ......... 594 

19. Processes of Deduction : creations of mathematics . . 595 

20. Experimental science ....... ib. 

PRACTICAL CONSTRUCTIONS. 

21. Region of practical inventions . . . . • 595 

The turn for experimenting an attribute of inven- 
tors: Kepler, Herschell, Daguerre . . 596 

22. The mental quality termed soundness of Judgment . 597 

The power of adaptation to complicated conditions 598 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. XXXI 

FTNE ART CONSTRUCTIONS. IMAGINATION. 

PAGE 

23. The presence of an emotional element in intellectual 

combinations ........ 599 

Distinction between the constructions of imagination and 

the constructions of science and practice . . . 600 

24. Combinations ruled by emotions : Terror, Anger . .601 

25. Superstructures reared on Egotistic feeling . . . 604 

26. Constructions to satisfy the emotions of Fine Art properly 

so called ........ 605 

27. The artist's standard is the feeling of the effect produced 606 

28. Reconciliation of Art with Nature; the regard due to 

truth by an artist ....... 608 



INTRODUCTION. 



CHAPTER I. 

DEFINITION OF MIND. 

i. rPHE operations and appearances that constitute Mind 
J- are indicated by such terms as Feeling, Thought, 
Memory, Reason, Conscience, Imagination, "Will, Passions, 
Affections, Taste. But the Definition of Mind aspires to 
comprehend in few words, by some apt generalisation, the 
whole kindred of mental facts, and to exclude everything of 
a foreign character. 

Mind, according to my conception of it, possesses three 
attributes, or capacities. 

i. It has Feeling, in which term I include what is com- 
monly called Sensation and Emotion. 

2. It can Act according to Feeling. 

3. It can Think. 

Consciousness is inseparable from the first of these capa- 
cities, but not, as appears to me, from the second or the 
third. True, our actions and thoughts are usually conscious, 
that is, are known to us by an inward perception ; but the 
consciousness of an act is manifestly not the act, and, although 
the assertion is less obvious, I believe that the consciousness 
of a thought is distinct from the thought. To flee on the 
appearance of danger is one thing, and to be conscious that 
we apprehend danger is another. 

The three terms, Feeling, Emotion, and Consciousness, 
will, I think, be found in reality to express one and the same 
fact or attribute of mind, and will be used accordingly in the 
present exposition. 

B 



2 DEFINITION OF MIND. 

2. A Definition should itself be intelligible, and composed 
of terms not standing in need of further definition. Thus, for 
a notion of what feeling is, I must refer each person to their 
own experience. The warmth felt in sunshine, the fragrance 
of flowers, the sweetness of honey, the bleating of cattle, the 
beauty of a landscape, are so many known states of conscious- 
ness, feeling, or emotion. The aim of the definition is to pro- 
pose a generalisation, or general expression including all such 
states; and this generalisation admits of being elucidated and 
discussed, proved or disproved. I shall now offer a few 
remarks in explanation of each of the heads of the Definition. 

(i.) With regard to the quality variously called Feeling, 
Consciousness, or Emotion, I would remark that this is the 
foremost and most unmistakeable mark of mind. The members 
of the human race agree in manifesting the property of Feeling. 
The orders of the brute creation give like symptoms of the 
same endowment. The vegetable and mineral worlds are 
devoid of it. True, it is each in ourselves that we have the 
direct evidence of the conscious state, no one person's con- 
sciousness being open to another person. But finding all the 
outward appearances that accompany consciousness in our- 
selves to be present in other human beings, as well as, under 
some variety of degree, in the lower animals, we naturally 
conclude their internal state to be the same with our own. 
The gambols of a child, the shrinking from a blow, or a cry 
on account of pain, and the corresponding expressions for 
mental states common to all languages, prove that men in all 
times have been similarly affected. The terms for expressing 
pleasure and pain in all their various forms and degrees are 
names of conscious states. Joy, sorrow, misery, comfort, bliss? 
happiness are a few examples out of this wide vocabulary. 

(2.) Although the signs and language of feeling are suffi- 
cient proofs of the existence of mind, yet mere feeling is not 
all that we look for in a mental nature. Action is a second 
requisite. The putting forth of power to execute some work 
or perform some operation is to us a mark of mind. Eating, 
drinking, running, flying, sowing, reaping, building, destroying, 
— are operations rising beyond the play of mere emotion. In 






ACTION A PART OF MIND. 3 

speaking of Action, however, as a characteristic of mind, we 
must render explicit the distinction between mental actions and 
suGh as are not mental. This distinction I have endeavoured to 
set forth by describing mental actions as under the prompting 
and guidance of Feeling. When an animal tears, masticates, 
and swallows its food, or hunts its prey, the stimulus and 
support of the activity manifested is to be sought in a strong 
sensation or feeling. By this limitation, we exclude many 
kinds of action familiar to us in nature, — the powers of wind, 
water, gravity, steam, gunpowder, electricity, vegetation, &c. 
True, the impulse of personification, so spontaneous in man, 
has often personified those powers, ascribing their workings to 
some mental nature concealed behind them. But there is a 
very great difference between the two cases, as is shown by 
the habitual mode of dealing with each, especially in modern 
scientific discussions. With respect to the powers of nature ; 
we ascertain the general laws of working solely by an examina- 
tion of the phenomena themselves. As regards gravitation, 
for example, Newton and his followers went no deeper than 
the observed movements, describing as they best might the 
uniformities or general rules that these movements follow^ 
There is still, it is true, a class of less scientific and more 
fanciful speculators, who are disposed to regard gravity as 
the direct emanation of a mind or will. Yet even they are 
still obliged to speak of the laws in the same way. But in 
regard to mental actions the practice is otherwise. There we 
descend for an explanation into the laws of feeling or emotion, 
— into the sensations and various affections that work within 
the animated creature. We cannot trace any uniformity in 
the operations of a human being by merely looking at the 
actions themselves, as we can in the fall of a stone or the 
course of a planet. It is the unseen feelings that furnish the 
key to the vast complication of man's works and ways. 

We may also remark, that these powers of creation give 
no evidence of mind according to the only form known to us. 
They have no senses, no brain, no gesticulation or signs of 
passion, no articulate utterance or language of emotion. Poets 
may fancy a passionate expression in the tumult of wind and 

B 2 



4 DEFINITION OF MIND. 

wave, cataract and thunder-storm, but the sources of these 
displays are so obviously the result of nature's forces, and so 
entirely unconnected with sensible impressions received from 
without or the stirrings of a mental nature within, that all 
such fancies are felt at once to be fictions. The same analogy 
that enables us to ascribe a true mental constitution to the 
brute creation, does not exist between humanity and the forces 
of external nature. 

The definition also excludes such animal functions as 
breathing, the circulation of the blood, and the movements of 
the intestines. These are in one sense actions, and serve a 
purpose; but they are not mental actions. We can conceive 
ourselves so constituted that these processes would have had 
to be prompted by inward emotions or desires, and to be 
controlled or arrested by feeling. They would then have been 
mental actions ; as it is they rank with the circulation of the 
sap in a plant. They are awake when we are asleep. 

There are certain other actions that would seem at first 
sight to be excluded by the definition, which, nevertheless, are 
always looked upon as of the kindred of mental actions. For 
example, it will be an object with us to show that there are 
in the human system movements and tendencies to movement 
independent of, and anterior to the stimulus of the outward 
world upon the senses. The eyes may open of themselves? 
the voice may break forth into utterance, the limbs may ges- 
ticulate, unprompted by any painful or pleasurable state. 
Yet those movements belong to the sphere of mind, and come 
to form part of its characteristic indications. It will be found, 
however, that these actions are not excluded, and for the 
following reason : — 

These exertions as soon as made are conscious : though 
not preceded by feeling, they are accompanied by feeling and 
come under the control of that feeling. An energy not origi- 
nating in consciousness may open the eyes or throw out the 
limbs, but the movement is a conscious one and is liable to be 
prolonged or arrested according as the feeling is pleasurable 
or the reverse. 

Another case in which our definition may appear to 



THOUGHT, OR INTELLIGENCE. 5 

exclude true mental phenomena, is that of the actions called 
habitual. These in some cases approach to the unconscious 
and automatic, like the movements of the heart and lungs ; 
and almost appear to become independent of feeling either to 
originate or to control them. Notwithstanding, such actions 
cannot be held as excluded, when we consider that they had 
their rise in feelings, and merely, in virtue of a plastic opera- 
tion truly mental in its nature, grow less and less the objects 
of consciousness. Although a musical performer should play 
an air with an almost entire absence of mind, we should still 
consider the performance as an effort of mind in the sense of 
the definition ; for the power was acquired step by step under 
the prompting and guidance of sensations and emotions. The 
mental force that gives cohesiveness to the successive touches 
is not included either in the first or second parts of the 
definition ; this belongs to the part next to be adverted to. 

The term Volition, applies, as I conceive, to the entire 
range of mental or feeling-prompted actions ; and it is pro- 
posed therefore to make constant use of this word for express- 
ing the second attribute of mind. 

(3). The concluding attribute of the definition is Thought, 
or Intelligence. Even in the lowest forms of mind some 
portion of Intelligence is found. The first fact implied in it 
is discrimination, with sense of agreement or of difference, 
as when of two things taken into the mouth the animal prefers 
the one to the other. If a honey-bee were to alight on one 
flower, try its quality, go to a second and then return to the 
first as the better of the two, such an act of deliberate pre- 
ference would imply intelligence along with volition. The 
fact that one impression can remain in the mind when the 
original is gone so as to be compared with a second impression, 
implies the very essence of intelligence however limited the 
degree. To go back upon a former experience as preferable 
to the present is to act upon an idea, a thought; whenever 
this is clearly manifested we see an intelligent being. 

Another fact of intelligence, also exhibited by the lower 
order of creatures, is the power of associating ends with means 
or instruments, so as to dictate intermediate actions. An 



b DEFINITION OF MIND. 

animal going to the water to quench its thirst performs an 
intelligent act ; in order to this act the creature had to 
associate in its mind the feeling of thirst with the place and 
the appearance of water and the movements requisite to 
approach it. This is an acquisition, an effort of memory, of 
the very same nature as the stored-up experience of the wisest 
of men. For an animal to have a home, this kind of memory 
or intelligence is indispensable. 

These two facts, discriminating with preference, and the 
performance of intermediate actions to attain an end, are the 
most universal aspects of intelligence, inasmuch as they 
pervade the whole of the animal creation. In the higher 
regions of mind, the attribute of thinking implies the storing up, 
reviving, and combining anew all the impressions constituting 
what we call knowledge, and principally derived from the 
outer world acting on the senses. It is this wider range of 
intellectual operations displayed by the human mind, that 
gives scope for exposition in a work like the present. 

Although in the animal constitution, Thought is coupled 
and conjoined with Feeling and Volition, it does not follow that 
intelligence is a necessary part of either the one or the other. 
I have a difficulty in supposing volition to operate in the 
entire absence of an intellectual nature, nevertheless I cannot 
help looking upon the intellect as a distinct endowment, 
following laws of its own, being sometimes well developed and 
sometimes feeble, without regard to the force or degree of the 
two other attributes. 

3. If we advert to the various classifications of the mental 
phenomena that have hitherto passed current, we shall find 
that the three attributes above specified have been more or 
less distinctly recognised. 

In the division of mind into Understanding and Will, 
the element of Emotion would appear to be left out entirely. 
We shall find in fact, however, that the feelings are implied 
in, or placed under, the head of the Will. The same remark 
applies to Reid's classification, also twofold and substantially 
identical with the foregoing, namely into Intellectual Powers 
and Active Powers. The submerged department of Emotion 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF MIND. 7 

will be found partly taken in among the Intellectual Powers, 
wherein are included the Senses and the Emotions of Taste, 
and partly treated of among the Active Powers, which 
comprise the discussion of the benevolent and malevolent 
Affections. 

Dr. Thomas Brown, displeased with the mode of applying 
the term ' Active' in the above division, went into the other 
extreme, and brought forward a classification where Emotion 
seems entirely to overlie the region of Volition. He divides 
mental states into external affections and internal affections. 
By external affections he means the feelings we have by the 
Senses, in other words Sensation. The internal affections he 
subdivides into intellectual states of mind and emotions. 
His division therefore is tantamount to Sensation, Emotion, 
and Intellect. All the phenomena commonly recognised as 
of an active or volitional nature he classes as a part of 
Emotion. 

Sir William Hamilton, in remarking on the arrangement 
followed in the writings of Professor Dugald Stewart, states 
his own view as follows : — ' If we take the Mental to the 
exclusion of Material phcenomena, that is, the phcenomena 
manifested through the medium of Self-consciousness or Re- 
flection, they naturally divide themselves into three categories 
or primary genera; — the phcenomena of Knowledge or Cogni- 
tion, — the phcenomena of Feeling or of Pleasure and Pain, — 
and the phcenomena of Conation or of Will and Desire/* 
Intelligence, Feeling, and Will are thus distinctively set forth. 

Mr. Morell, in his Elements of Psychology, adopts the 
same triple division, and shows that it pervades the systems 
of many of the recent German expositors of Mind, for 
example, Beneke. 

I may farther notice the mode of laying out the subject 
that has occurred to an able physiologist. I quote a passage 
intended as introductory to the Anatomy of the Nervous 
System, 



* Collected Works of Dugald Stewart, Yol. II. : Advertisement by the 
Editor. 



8 DEFINITION OF MIND. 

' Of the functions performed through the agency of the 
nervous system, some are entirely corporeal, whilst others 
involve phenomena of a mental or psychical nature. In 
the latter and higher class of such functions are first to be 
reckoned those purely intellectual operations, carried on 
through the instrumentality of the brain, which do not 
immediately arise from an external stimulus, and do not 
manifest themselves in outward acts. To the same class also 
belong sensation and volition. In the exercise of sensation 
the mind becomes conscious, through the medium of the 
brain, of impressions conducted or propagated to that organ 
along the nerves from distant parts; and in voluntary motion 
a stimulus to action arises in the brain, and is carried out- 
wards by the nerves from the central organ to the voluntary 
muscles. Lastly, emotion, which gives rise to gestures and 
movements, varying with the different mental affections which 
they express, is an involuntary state of the mind, connected 
with some part of the brain, and influencing the muscles 
through the medium of the nerves/* 

In this passage a quadruple partition is indicated, — Sen- 
sation, Intellect, Emotion, and Volition. Seeing, however, 
that Emotion, in a comprehensive definition, such as that 
given in the foregoing section, takes in Sensation ; these four 
divisions are reducible to the three defining attributes above 
laid down. 

4. In the plan of the present work, Book First, entitled 
Sense and Instinct, will include the discussion of both Feeling 
and Volition in their lower forms, that is, apart from Intellect, 
or so as to involve Intellect in the least possible degree; the 
Sensations of the different Senses will form a leading portion 
of the contents. This book will comprise all that is primitive 
or instinctive in the susceptibilities and impulses of the mental 
organization. The Second Book will propose to itself the full 
exposition of the intellectual phenomena. 

Thus, while regarding Emotion, Volition, and Intellect, as 



* Dr. Sharpey, in Qttain's Anatomy, 4th edition, p. clxxxvi. 



ORDER OF EXPOSITION. y 

the ultimate properties and the fundamental classification of 
mind, we do not propose that the exposition should proceed 
strictly in the order in which those are stated. 

Although Emotion and Volition, in their elementary 
aspect, can be explained before entering on the consideration 
of the Intellect, while one large important department of 
Emotion, namely, Sensation, is always considered as intro- 
ductory to the Intellectual powers, yet the full exposition of 
the emotions and active impulses of our nature properly 
comes last in the systematic arrangement of the subject of 
mind. This exposition I do not enter upon in my present 
treatise. 



CHAPTER II. 

OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

i. rPHE connexion of the mental processes with certain of 
-L the bodily organs is now understood to be of the most 
intimate kind. A knowledge of the structure of those organs 
may therefore be expected to aid us in the study of mind. 
The contribution at present obtained from this source is some- 
thing considerable ; which makes it not improper to introduce 
a small portion of the Anatomy and Physiology of the human 
body into the present work. The parts of the human frame 
that chiefly concern the student of mental science are the 
Nerves and Nerve Centres (principally collected in the Brain), 
the Organs of Sense, and the Muscular System. The organs 
of sense and movement will fall to be described in Book First ; 
a brief description of the Nerves and Nerve Centres will 
occupy this preliminary chapter, in which we shall confine 
ourselves as far as possible to the facts bearing directly upon 
Mind, introducing only such further explanations as may be 
needed to make those facts clear and evident. 

2. That the Brain is the principal organ of Mind is proved 
by such observations as the following: — 

(i.) From the local feelings that we experience during 
mental excitement. In most cases of bodily irritation we can 
assign the place or seat of the disturbance. We localise in- 
digestion in the stomach, irritation of the lungs in the chest, 
toothache in the gums or jaws, and when the mental workings 
give rise to pain we point to the head. In ordinary circum- 
stances the action of the brain is unconscious, but in a time of 
great mental agitation, or after any unusual exertion of 
thought, the aching or oppression within the skull tells where 
the seat of action is, precisely as aching limbs prove what 



THE BRAIN AND THE MIND. 11 

muscles have been exercised during a long day's march. The 
observation can occasionally be carried much farther ; for it 
is found that a series of intense mental emotions, or an exces- 
sive action of the powers of thinking, will end in a diseased 
alteration of the substance of the brain. 

(2.) Injury or disease of the brain impairs in some way or 
other the powers of the mind. A blow on the head will 
destroy consciousness for the time ; a severe hurt will cause a 
loss of memory. The various disorders of the brain, as for 
example, softening, &c, are known to affect the mental 
energies. Insanity is often accompanied by palpable disease 
of the cerebral substance, as shown by outward symptoms 
during life and by dissection after death. 

(3.) The products of nervous waste are increased when the 
mind is more than ordinarily exerted. It is ascertained that 
the kidneys are mainly concerned in removing from the blood 
the saline and other matters arising from the waste of nervous 
substance ; and it is well known that the secretions from the 
kidneys are greatly increased in times of mental excitement. 
Chemical analysis proves that the products on such occasions 
are derived from the nervous tissue. 

(4) There is an indisputable connexion between size of 
brain and the mental energy displayed by the individual man 
or animal. It cannot be maintained that size is the only cir- 
cumstance that determines the amount of mental force ; quality 
is as important as quantity, whether in nerve, muscle, or any 
other portion of the animal structure. But just as largeness 
of muscle gives greater strength of body as a general rule, so 
largeness of brain gives greater vigour of mental impulse. 
The facts proving the large size and great weight of the heads 
of remarkable men have often been quoted. ' All other 
circumstances being alike/ says Dr. Sharpey, ' the size of the 
brain appears to bear a general relation to the mental power 
of the individual, — although instances occur in which this rule 
is not applicable. The brain of Cuvier weighed upwards of 
64 oz., and that of the late Dr. Abercrombie about 63 oz. 
avoirdupois. On the other hand, the brain in idiots is remark- 
ably small. In three idiots, whose ages were sixteen, forty, 



12 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

and fifty years, Tiedemann found the weight of their respective 
brains to be 19! oz., i$\ oz., and zz\ oz. \ and Dr. Sims 
records the case of a female idiot twelve years old, whose brain 
weighed 27 oz. The weight of the human brain is taken at 
about 3 lbs. (48 oz.)/ — Quain's Anatomy, 5th edition, p. 671. 

(5.) The specific experiments on the nerve cords and 
nerve centres, to be afterwards quoted, have proved the 
immediate dependence of sensation, intelligence, and volition 
on those parts. 

No fact in our constitution can be considered more certain 
than this, that the brain is the chief organ of mind, and has 
mind for its principal function. As we descend in the animal 
scale, through Quadrupeds, Birds, Reptiles, Fishes, &c, the 
nervous system dwindles according to the decreasing measure 
of mental endowment. 

3. ' The Nervous System consists of a central part, or 
rather a series of connected central organs named the cerebro- 
spinal axis, or cerebrospinal centre ,-* and of the nerves, 
which have the form of cords connected by one extremity with 
the cerebro-spinal centre, and extending from thence through 
the body to the muscles, sensible parts, and other organs 
placed under their control. The nerves form the medium of 
communication between these distant parts and the centre ; 
one class of nervous fibres, termed afferent (in-bringing) or 
centripetal, conducting impressions towards the centre, — 
another, the efferent (out-carrying) or centrifugal, carrying 
material stimuli from the centre to the moving organs. The 
nerves are, therefore, said to be internuncial in their office, 
whilst the central organ receives the impressions conducted to 
it by the one class of nerves, and imparts stimuli to the other, 
— rendering certain of these impressions cognizable to the 
mind, and combining in due association, and towards a definite 
end, movements, whether voluntary or involuntary, of different 
and often of distant parts. 



* Being contained partly within the head, and partly within the spine, 
or back-bone. 



THE NERVOUS SUBSTANCE. 13 

c Besides the cerebrospinal centre and the nervous cords, 
the nervous system comprehends also certain bodies named 
ganglia, which are connected with the nerves in various 
situations. These bodies, though of much smaller size and 
less complex nature than the brain, agree, nevertheless, with 
that organ in their elementary structure, and to a certain 
extent also in their relation to the nervous fibres with which 
they are connected ; and this correspondence becomes even 
more apparent in the nervous system of the lower members of 
the animal series. For these reasons, as well as from evidence 
derived from experiment, but which, as yet, it must be con- 
fessed, is of a less cogent character, the ganglia are regarded 
by many as nervous centres, to which impressions may be 
referred, and from which motorial stimuli may be reflected or 
emitted ; but of local and limited influence as compared with 
the cerebro-spinal centre, and operating without our conscious- 
ness and without the intervention of the will/ — Quain, 
Introduction, p. clxxxvii. 

The foregoing division of the nervous system into nerve- 
centres and nerve cords determines the order and method of 
description both as regards their Anatomy or structure, and 
their Physiology, or function. 

OF THE NERVOUS SUBSTANCE. 

4. For the full details of the structure of nerve, as regards 
both the ultimate elements of cell and fibre and the masses 
made up of these elements, reference must be had to the best 
works on Anatomy. In the present state of our knowledge 
the entire significance of these details cannot be assigned ; 
Physiology on the one hand, and mental science on the other, 
must be in a, more advanced condition in order to make out 
such significance. Nevertheless there are certain leading 
features of the nerve structure that are even now of interest 
in the study of mind. I quote again from Dr. Sharpeys con- 
tributions to the 5th edition of Quain's Anatomy. 

1 The nervous system is made up of a substance proper and 
peculiar to it, with inclosing membranes, cellular tissue, and 



14 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

blood-vessels. The nervous substance has long been distin- 
guished into two kinds, obviously differing from each other in 
colour, and therefore named the tvhite, and the grey, or 
cineritious (ash-coloured). 

' When subjected to the microscope, the nervous substance 
is seen to consist of two different structural elements, viz., 
fibres, and cells or vesicles. The fibres are found universally 
in the nervous cords, and they also constitute the greater part 
of the nervous centres ; the cells or vesicles, on the other 
hand, are confined in a great measure to the latter, and do 
not exist in the nerves properly so called, unless it be at their 
peripheral expansions iu some of the organs of sj^ecial sense ; 
they are contained in the grey portion of the brain, spinal 
cord, and ganglia, Avhich grey substance is, in fact, made up of 
these vesicles intermixed in many parts with fibres, and with 
a variable quantity of granular or amorphous matter/ — Intro- 
duction, p. clxxxviii. 

The author goes on to describe the nerve fibres as of two 
distinct kinds, and the nerve cells as consisting of several 
varieties, but to us it must suffice to know that the nerve cords 
or connexions are bundles of separate fibres, and that the 
nerve centres are aggregates of cells or vesicles mixed with 
fibres. 

The mode of connexion of nerve threads with the central 
vesicles is not uniform. In one class of cases the vesicles are 
pear-shaped, and send out tails that are the commencement of 
fibres, so that the cells are, as it were, swellings or expansions 
of the fibres, having granular or solid nuclei enclosed in 
them. According to this plan, in any nerve cord coming 
from the extremities of the body to the brain, the separate 
fibres would end each in a swollen mass or vesicle, and the 
total of these vesicles would be the grey matter- of the brain. 
To this grey matter, with its infinitude of cells, all the 
nerves tend, or from it they issue. These two elements of 
nerve cell and nerve fibre are the sole ingredients peculiar 
to the brain. The blood vessels are common to it with 
every other organ ; whilst the membranes or sheaths that 
surround the cords and enclose the brain serve partly for 



NERVE FIBRES AND NERVE VESICLES. 



15 



protection and insulation, and partly for containing and dis- 



tributing the blood vessels 



Fig. i. 




To form an estimate of the multitude of nerve fibres 
entering into the ramifying cords, it is necessary to be made 
aware of the size of the ultimate filaments. ' Their size differs 
considerably even in the same nerve, but much more in 
different parts of the nervous system ; some being as small as 
t ne isooo ? an d others upwards of tsVo oi * an i ncn m diameter ; 
and the same fibre may change its size in different parts of its 
course/ Thus it would appear that a nerve branch, like the 
main trunk supplying the arm, might contain hundreds of 
thousands of separate fibres. The optic nerve of one of the 
eyes might contain as many as a million of fibres. 

The nerve vesicles also ' differ greatly from one another in 
size; some being scarcely larger than a human blood corpuscle,f 
others ^^o" of an inch or upwards in diameter/ We may, 
therefore, speak in somewhat similar terms respecting the 



* ' Nucleated nerve-cells magnified 170 diameters, a and b from the 
cortical grey matter of the cerebellum; c and d from the spongy grey 
matter of the medulla oblongata, n the nucleus of a cell, — {a, c, and d, 
after Hannover).' From Qtjain's Anatomy, p. cxcvii. 

f The magnitude of the red corpuscles of the human blood ' differs some- 
what even in the same drop of blood, and it has been variously assigned by 
authors ; but the prevalent size may be stated at from 3^0 to 3^0 °f an 
inch in diameter, and about one-fourth of that in thickness.' 



16 



OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 



countless millions of nerve cells existing in the grey substance 
of a single convolution of the brain. The minuteness of the 
fibres and vesicles of the nerve substance is not without 
importance, for we are to consider that each fibre carries 
forward its own distinct impression without affecting, or being 
affected by, the impressions passing along the other fibres that 
run side by side with it in the same bundle. In the act of 
perceiving the objects about us, this distinctness enables us to 
hold in our minds all the parts of a complicated scene, each in 
the proper place, without mingling or confusion ; and in the 
command of our muscular movements it gives the means of 
singling out specific muscles to be acted on while all the others 
are left quiescent. 



Fig 



OF THE NERVOUS CENTRES. 

5. In the collective mass made up of the brain and spinal 
cord, and denominated the cerebro- 
spinal axis or centre, the following 
parts stand distinct from each other, 
although mutually connected by 
bundles of nerve fibres. 

I. The Spinal Cord, contained 
in the back bone, and sending out 
two pairs of nerves from between 
every two vertebra?, one pair to each 
side of the body. The Cord consists 
of a column of white fibrous matter 
with a grey portion enclosed. In a 
cross section, the grey matter is seen 
to form two crescents with the horns 
turned outwards, and connected in 
the middle of their convexities by a 
cross band. 




* ' Plans in outline, showing the front, A, and the sides, B, of the spinal 
cord with the fissures upon it; also sections of the grey and white matter, 
and the roots of the spinal nerves, a, a, Anterior fissure, p, jp, Posterior 
fissure, b, Posterior, and c, Anterior horn of grey matter, e, Grey com- 
missure, r, Anterior, and s, Posterior roots of a spinal nerve.' — Quain, p. 676. 



PARTS OF THE BRAIN. 



17 



II. The Encephalon or Brain. This includes the entire 
contents of the cavity of the skull, or cranium. The spinal 
cord is continued up into it. The brain is itself an aggregate 
of distinguishable masses of mixed grey and white matter. 
Each of these masses is looked upon either as a distinct centre 
or as communicating between the centres. In proportion as 
the grey vesicular matter prevails the mass has the character 
of a centre ; according as the white fibrous substance prevails 
the part serves as a medium of conduction or communication 
solely. Of these various masses, some have a preponderance 
of grey, others of white matter. None are purely of one kind. 

The mere mechanical arrangement of the brain is exceed- 
ingly complex, and there are different modes of classifying and 
grouping the various portions. The division adopted by 
human Anatomists is into four parts (a different arrangement 
has been proposed founded on Comparative Anatomy). Those 
four parts are the Cerebrum, the Cerebellum, the Pons Varolii t 

Fig. 3 * 



dS&fc 




* ' A plan in outline, showing, in a lateral view, the parts of the ence- 
phalon separated somewhat from each other. A, Cerebrum, e, Fissure 
of Sylvius, which separates the anterior and middle lobes. B. Cerebellum. 
C. Pons Varolii. D. Medulla oblongata, a. Peduncles of cerebrum; b. Supe- 
rior; c. Middle; and d. Inferior peduncles of cerebellum.' — Qxjain, p. 68 1. 

C 



18 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

and the Medulla Oblongata. ' The cerebrum, which is the 
highest and by far the largest part of the human encephalon, 
occupies the upper and larger portion of the cranial cavity/ 
1 The cerebellum is placed beneath the hinder part of the 
cerebrum, by which it is completely overlapped/ The pons 
Varolii is in the base of the brain near the entrance of the 
spinal cord, and connects together the three other parts, — the 
cerebrum, cerebellum, and medulla oblongata. The medulla 
oblongata connects the spinal cord with the brain. 

6. In giving a more detailed description of those four parts, 
it will be convenient to take them in an inverse order, 
beginning from below, or where the brain joins the spinal 
cord. 

(i.) The Medulla Oblongata. — This portion is continuous 
below with the spinal cord, of which it seems an expansion; 
lying wholly within the cranial cavity, its upper end passes 
into the pons Varolii. See Figs. 3 and 4, D. 

'It is of a pyramidal form, having its broad extremity 
turned upwards, from which it tapers to its point of con- 
nexion with the spinal cord ; it is expanded laterally at its 
upper part. Its length from the pons to the lower extremity 
of the pyramids is about an inch and a quarter ; its greatest 
breadth is about three quarters of an inch ; and its thickness 
from before backwards about half an inch/ — Quain, p. 683. 

In form and general Anatomical characters the medulla 
oblongata very much resembles the cord, of which it is a pro- 
longation upwards to the brain. It is not our purpose here to 
enter into the minute Anatomy of the part, or to set forth the 
points of difference between it and the cord ; suffice it to 
observe that in it the white and grey constituents of the cord, 
are both increased in size and altered in arrangement. The 
grey matter especially becomes more abundant and additional 
deposits occur. The medulla oblongata has thus more of the 
character of an independent centre of nervous action than 
belongs to the cord. It gives origin to several nerves of a very 
special and important nature. 

(2.) The Pons Varolii, or annular protuberance (tuber 



PONS VAROLII. — THE CEREBRUM. 19 

annulare). (See Figs. 3 and 4 c.) This ' is a comparatively 
small portion of the encephalon, which occupies a central 
position on its under surface, above and in front of the medulla 
oblongata, below and behind the crura cerebri a, and between 
the middle crura of the cerebellum c, with all which parts it is 
connected/ By the term ' crura cerebri/ introduced in this 
description, is meant the ' legs' or roots of the cerebrum, or the 
two bundles of nerve that unite it with the parts below. The 
crura of the cerebellum express in like manner the several con- 
nexions of that centre with the other centres. On account of 
the intermediate and connecting position of the pons, it has 
also been called the middle-brain (meso-cephalon). From its 
embracing as in a ring the medulla oblongata and stems of 
the cerebrum, it has derived the name of annular protuberance ; 
the other name, ' pons/ or bridge, expresses the same circum- 
stance. 

' The substance of the pons Varolii consists of transverse 
and longitudinal white fibres, interspersed with a quantity of 
diffused grey matter. The transverse fibres, with a few excep- 
tions, enter the cerebellum under the name of the middle 
crura or peduncles, and form a commissural (or connecting) 
system for its two hemispheres. The longitudinal fibres are 
those which ascend from the medulla oblongata into the crura 
cerebri, augmented, it would seem, by others which arise within 
the pons from the grey matter scattered through it/ — Quain, 
p. 689. The pons is thus mainly a grand junction between 
the medulla oblongata and spinal cord below, the cerebrum 
above, and the cerebellum behind. The existence of a con- 
siderable amount of the grey or vesicular matter proves that 
conduction or communication is not the sole function of this 
part of the brain. 

(3.) ' The cerebrum or brain proper (Figs. 3 and 4, a), as 
already mentioned, is the highest, and by far the largest portion 
of the encephalon. It is of an ovoid (or egg) shape, but is 
irregularly flattened on its under side. It is placed in the 
cranium with its small end forwards, its greatest width being 
opposite to the parietal eminences. 

' The cerebrum consists of two lateral halves, or hemi- 

c 2 



20 



OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM". 



spheres, as they are called, which, though connected by a 
median portion of nervous substance, are separated in a great 

Fig. 4 * 




part of their extent by a fissure, named the great longitudinal 
fissure, which is seen on the upper surface of the brain, and 
partly also on its base. 

' The cerebral hemispheres are not plain or uniform upon 
the surface, but are moulded into numerous smooth and 
tortuous eminences, named convolutions, or gyri, which are 
marked off from each other by deep furrows, called sulci, or 
anfractuosities. These convolutions are coloured externally; 



* Shows the under surface or hase of the encephalon freed from its 
membranes. A. Cerebrum, f, g, h. Its anterior, middle, and posterior 
lobes. B. Cerebellum. C. Pons Varolii. D. Medulla Oblongata, d. Pe- 
duncle of cerebrum, i to 9, indicate the several pairs of cerebral nerves, 
numbered according to the usual notation, viz. — 1. Olfactory nerve. 2. 
Optic. 3. Motor nerve of eye. 4. Pathetic. 5. Trifacial. 6. Abducent 
nerve of eye. 7. Auditory, and 7', Facial. 8. Glossopharyngeal. 8'. 
Vagus 8". Spinal accessory nerve. 9. Lingual or hypoglossal nerve. 



THE CEREBRUM. 21 

for the surface of the cerebral hemispheres, unlike the parts 
hitherto described, is composed of grey matter.' — Quain, 690. 

The complete description of the cerebrum, includes an 
account of the external surface, with its convolutions and the 
various masses that make up the interior and in part appear 
at the base of the brain. Although in the highest degree 
interesting as a study, no important application to our present 
subject arises out of such minute knowledge. There are, how- 
ever, a few particulars that it is of use for us to add, selected 
out of the elaborate detail of cerebral Anatomy. 

A distinction exists between the convoluted mass of the 
hemispheres and certain enclosed smaller masses of the cere- 
brum. Of these there are two that are usually named together, 
partly on account of their proximity, and partly because it has 
not been practicable hitherto to distinguish their functions. 
They are the optici thalami and corpora striata, being double 
and symmetrical on the two sides. They both lie imbedded 
in the heart of the hemispheres. The peduncles or stems of the 
cerebrum pass into them before spreading-out into the mass of 
the hemispheres. The third important mass is termed the 
corpora quadrigemina (quadruple bodies),* from consisting of 
four rounded masses put together in a square. This portion is 
more detached than the two others, and finds a place between 
the cerebrum and cerebellum. In some of the inferior animals 
it is very large, and takes a prominent position in the general 
structure of the brain ; whereas the two other masses above 
mentioned for the most part rise and fall according to the 
degree of development of the convoluted hemispheres. Hence 
the comparative Anatomist assigns to the quadruple bodies a 
character and function apart from the rest of the cerebrum. 
I quote a short description of each of the three centres. 

The corpora striata ' are two large ovoid masses of grey 
matter, the greater part of whichis imbedded in the middle of the 
white substance of the hemisphere of the brain/ ' The surface 



* See in Fig. 3, the two rounded eminences behind b, the superior 
peduncle of the cerebellum. These represent the corpora quadrigemina in 
section. 



22 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

of the corpus striatum is composed of grey matter. At some 
depth from the surface white fibres may be seen cutting into 
it, which are prolonged from the corresponding cerebral 
peduncle, and give it the streaked appearance from which it 
has received its name/ 

' The thalami optici (posterior ganglia of the brain) are of 
an oval shiipe, and rest on the corresponding cerebral crura, 
which they in a manner embrace. On the outer side each 
thalamus is bounded by the corpus striatum, and is then con- 
tinuous with the white substance of the hemisphere/ 'The 
inner sides of the two thalami are turned to each other/ ' The 
optic thalami are white on the surface, and consist of several 
layers of white fibres intermixed with grey matter/ 

1 In front of the cerebellum are certain eminences, which 
may be reached from the surface of the brain. These are the 
corpora quadrigemina, and above them is the pineal gland/ 

('The pineal gland (conarium) so named from its shape 
(pinus, conus, the fruit of the fir), is a' small reddish body, 
which rests upon the anterior pair of the corpora quadri- 
gemina.' 'It is about three lines (a quarter of an inch) in 
Length, and its broad part, or base, is turned forwards, and is 
connected with the rest of the cerebrum by white substance/) 

' The corpora or tubercula quadrigemina are four rounded 
eminences, separated by a crucial depression, placed two on 
each side of the middle line, one before the other. They are 
connected with the back of the optici thalami, and with the 
cerebral peduncles at either side/ 

' The upper or anterior tubercles, are somewhat larger and 
darker in colour than the posterior. In the adult, both pairs 
are solid, and are composed of white substance outside, con- 
taining grey matter within. 

' They receive bands of white fibres from below/ — 'A white 
cord also passes up on each side from the cerebellum to 
the corpora quadrigemina, and is continued onwards to the 
thalami : these two white cords are the superior peduncles of 
the cerebellum. At each side, the corpora quadrigemina send 
off two white tracts, which pass to the thalami and to the com- 
mencements of the optic nerves,' 



CORPORA QUADRIGEMINA. 23 

1 In the human brain these quadrigeminal bodies are small 
in comparison with their size in the series of animals. In rumi- 
nant, soliped, and rodent animals, the anterior tubercles are 
much larger than the posterior, as may be seen in the sheep, 
horse, and rabbit In the brains of carnivora, the posterior 
tubercles are rather the larger. 

' In the foetus this part of the brain appears very early, 
and then forms a large proportion of the cerebral mass. The 
eminences are at first single on each side, and hollow. They 
are constant in the brains of all vertebrate animals, but in 
fishes, reptiles, and birds, they are only two in number, and 
hollow. In marsupialia and monotremata, they are also two 
in number, but solid.' 

In this brief allusion to the different parts composing the 
cerebrum, we have had to exclude the mention of many smaller 
portions. We have also avoided all allusion to the ventricles 
of the brain. These are enclosed spaces extending in various 
directions, and serving as boundaries to the other parte.* 



* The following passage may assist in giving a connected view of the 
cerebrum, and also of the nature of the ventricular cavities or space. 

' The hemispheres are connected together in the middle by the corpus 
callosum, and it is obvious that the structures filling up the interpedun- 
cular space, serve also as connecting media. Between the corpus callosum 
above and the peduncles below, the two hemispheres are partially separated 
from each other, so as to leave an interval, the general ventricular space, 
across which some slighter connecting portions of nervous substance pass 
from one hemisphere to another. 

' Again, as seen in a transverse vertical section of the cerebrum, the 
peduncles diverge as they ascend towards the hemispheres, and pass on 
each side through two large masses of grey matter, sometimes called 
ganglia of the brain, — at first through the thalamus opticus, and afterwards 
through a much larger mass named corpus striatum. These two masses 
of grey matter project somewhat, as smooth convex eminences, on the 
upper and inner surface of the diverging fibres of the peduncles. Imme- 
diately above the thalami and corpora striata, the hemispheres are con- 
nected together across the median plane by the corpus callosum ; and it is 
between the under surface of the latter, and the upper surfaces of the 
eminences mentioned and the interpeduncular structures, that the general 
ventricular space is situated in the interior of the cerebrum. The upper 
part of this space is again divided by a median vertical partition, so as to 
form the two lateral ventricles : below this, it forms a single cavity named 
the third or middle ventricle, which communicates with both the lateral 
ventricles above, and, below, with the ventricle of the cerebellum or fourth 
ventricle. The median vertical partition, which separates the lateral ven- 
tricles from each other, consists at one part (septum lucidum) of two layers, 
between which is contained the Jifth and remaining ventricle of the brain.' 
— Quaix, pp. 701-2. 



24 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

(4.) ' The cerebellum, little brain, or after brain (Figs. 3 
and 4, b), consists of a body and three pairs of crura or 
peduncles, by which it is connected with the rest of the 
encephalon. They are named superior, middle, and inferior, 
peduncles. 

1 The superior peduncles (Fig. 3, 6) connect the cerebellum 
with the cerebrum through the corpora quadrigemina, as already 
stated. The inferior peduncles d, pass downward to the back 
part of the medulla oblongata. The middle peduncles, c, pass 
from the middle of the cerebellum around the outer side of 
the crura of the cerebrum, and meet in front of the pons 
Varolii, constituting its transverse fibres. They connect the 
two halves of the cerebellum below. All these peduncles 
consist of white fibres only; and they pass into the interior of 
the cerebellum at its fore part/ 

' The body of the cerebellum A, being covered with cortical 
substance, is of a grey colour externally, but is rather darker 
on the surface than the cerebrum. Its greatest diameter is 
transverse: it is about three and a half or four inches wide, 
about two or two and a half from before backwards, and about 
two inches deep in the thickest part, but is much thinner all 
round its outer border. 

' It consists of two lateral hemispheres, joined together by 
a median portion called the worm, or vermiform process, which 
in birds, and in some animals still lower in the scale, is the 
only part existing.' 

' The body of the cerebellum at the surface, and for some 
depth, consists of numerous nearly parallel laminae or folia, 
which are composed of grey and white matter, and might be 
compared with the gyri or convolutions of the cerebrum, but 
are smaller and not convoluted. These are separated by sulci 
of different depths.' — Quain, 720-2.* 



* The above is a brief outline of the parts of the brain, as given in the 
best works on human Anatomy. I shall here append a view of its divisions 
founded on the comparative Anatomy of the vertebrate series of animals, 
and with reference to the analysis of the cranium into vertebral sections. 
It is supposed that the bony parts of the head and face of any animal in this 
series is made up of four vertebrae, expanded and transformed for the 
accommodation of the brain, senses, and the other organs that distinguish 



INTERNAL STRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN. 25 

7. We must next attend to the internal structure of the 
brain, considered as made up of the two kinds of matter, the 
grey, vesicular, or central substance, and the white, fibrous, 
or communicating substance. The distribution and arrange- 
ment of those two kinds of matter throw light upon the mode 
of action, or the peculiar kind of activity that distinguishes 
the brain. The subject is still a very obscure one, but not so 
obscure as it has been, and we can even now leam from it a 
better mode of conceiving the workings of the nervous system 
than what has come down to us from the times when nothing 
whatever was known. I still quote from Dr. Sharpey. 



the head from the rest of the spine. On a similar supposition, the Drain 
would he looked upon as an expansion of as much of the spinal cord as 
would extend over the length of four vertebra?. When we descend in the 
scale, as low a" fishes, we find a most apparent division of the encephalon 
into four segments, corresponding with the four vertebra?, whose expansion 
makes the head. 

Proceeding upon this hint, Professor Owen makes a classification of the 

{>arts of the brain, which he considers applicable alike to the highest and 
owest members of the vertebrate class. Beginning from behind, where 
the encephalon joins the spinal cord, he enumerates as follows, specifying 
at the same time what he considers the functions of the several segments. 

I. Encephalon (Hind-brain). This includes the hinder paints of the 
mass, namely, the medulla oblongata, the pons Varolii, and the cerebellum. 
These parts together form an aggregate centre for sustaining the functions 
of Respiration and Digestion, and for performing combined and rhythmical 
movements. The two first functions, Respiration and Digestion, are com- 
monly conceived as attaching to the medulla oblongata. The pons Varolii 
is far more of a connecting organ than a centre. To the cerebellum belongs, 
as is supposed, the function of harmonizing complex movements, of the 
instinctive kind, such as walking on all fours. Of the functions of the 
brain, we shall, however, speak particularly again. 

II. Mesencephalon (Middle-brain). The parts here intended, are those 
next in order to the previous. They are the enclosed space, called the 
third ventricle, the corpora quadrigemina, with its connected organ, the 
pineal gland, and another small round mass in the same region named the 
Pituitary body or gland- This is considered the Centre of Vision, and of 
the movements prompted and regulated by vision. 

III. Prosencephalon (Fore- brain). The hemispheres, including the 
corpora striata and thalami optici. This is reckoned the seat of the higher 
functions of mind, namely, Consciousness, Volition, and Intelligence. It 
is the portion whose enlargement distinguishes the human subject. In the 
fish and reptile it is surpassed in size by the members of the middle brain, 
the corpora quadrigemina being the chief of these. 

IV. Hhinencephalon (Nose-brain). The olfactory lobe and crura. In 
man this is a very insignificant mass, lying over the nose and between the 
eyes. In the lowest vertebrate animals, it stands forward as the termi- 
nating segment of the brain. It. is the Centre of Smell. 



26 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

' White Part of the Encephalon. — The white matter of the 
encephalon consists of tubular fibres. The general direction 
which they follow is best seen in a brain that has been 
hardened by immersion in spirits, although it is true that we 
do not then trace the single fibres, but only the fine bundles 
and fibrous lamellae which they form by their aggregation. 

' It may suffice here to remark, that one large body of 
fibres can be traced upwards from the spinal cord to the grey 
matter situated in different regions of the encephalon ; some 
of these fibres reaching as high as the cortical layer on the 
surface of the cerebrum and cerebellum, others apparently 
terminating in the corpus striatum, thalamus opticus, corpora 
quadrigemina, and other special deposits of grey substance. 
These fibres are generally believed to be continued by their 
lower ends into the spinal nerves, though it is also supposed 
that part of them may terminate below in the grey matter of 
the cord. Other fibres pass between different parts of the 
encephalon itself, serving most probably to connect its dif- 
ferent masses of grey substance; among the most conspicuous 
examples of these may be adduced, the fibres connecting 
the cerebrum and cerebellum, forming what are called the 
superior cerebellar peduncles ; fibres passing up from the grey 
matter in the medulla oblongata and pons Varolii, in com- 
pany with those from the spinal cord, and having probably a 
similar connexion superiorly : fibres radiating from the corpus 
striatum to the cortical grey matter of the cerebrum; fibres 
between adjacent or distant convolutions; and, lastly, the 
vast body of fibres belonging to the commissures of the 
cerebrum and middle crura of the cerebellum which pass from 
one side of the encephalon to another.' — QuAlN, Introduc- 
tion, p. ccii. 

The following is an interesting classification of the dif- 
ferent fibres of the cerebrum, and will serve to enhance the 
effect of the foregoing extract. 

' The fibres of the cerebrum, though exceedingly compli- 
cated in their arrangement, and forming many different col- 
lections, may be referred to three principal systems, according 
to the general course which they take, viz. — i. Ascending or 



FIBRES OF THE CEREBRUM. 27 

peduncular fibres, which pass up from the medulla oblongata 
to the hemispheres, and constitute the two crura or peduncles 
of the cerebrum. They increase in number as they ascend 
through the pons, and still further in passing through the 
optic thalami and striated bodies, beyond which they spread 
in all directions into the hemispheres. These were named by 
Gall the diverging fibres. 2. Transverse or commissural 
fibres, which connect the two hemispheres together. 3. Lon- 
gitudinal or collateral fibres, which, keeping on the same 
side of the middle line, connect more or less distant parts of 
the same hemisphere together.' — Quain, p. 736. 

This general classification is followed out by the author 
into minute details, full of interest in themselves, but too 
technical and too little instructive as regards the workings 
of mind, to be farther dwelt upon here. We shall now give 
an extract on the distribution of the grey matter, and then 
pass to the general view of the mechanism and mode of 
working of the brain, suggested by these descriptions of its 
component structure. 

' Grey Matter of the Enceplialon. — Considering the im- 
puted physiological importance of the grey nervous substance, 
it may be well to mention connectedly the different positions 
in which it is found in the several parts of the encephalon. 

{ By far the larger amount is situated upon the convoluted 
surface of the cerebrum and the laminated surface of the 
cerebellum, forming, in each case, the external cortical layer 
of cineritious matter/ 

I regret to have to omit a portion of the connected 
account of the spread of the grey matter in the parts in the 
interior and base of the brain, as including a number of terms 
that the reader has not been prepared for in the present 
sketch of the nervous system. We must rest satisfied with 
perusing in addition to the above, the account of the distri- 
bution of grey substance in the larger portions, and in the 
parts already in some degree known to us. 

' In the crura cerebri, the grey matter is collected into a 
dark mass; below this it is continuous with that of the pons 
and medulla oblongata, and through them with the spinal 



28 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

cord/ Thus though the crura cerebri are, in the main, con- 
nexions of white matter between the hemispheres and the 
parts below, yet, like the medulla oblongata and spinal cord, 
they contain in the interior a portion of the grey matter, and 
are to that extent centres of nerve force, as well as being 
conductors. 

' In the centre of each of the corpora quadrigemina, grey 
matter is also found, and it occurs in the pineal gland (and in 
the corpora geniculata). These last bodies appear to be 
appendages of the large masses of grey matter, situated in 
the interior of the cerebrum, named the optic thalami; which 
again, are succeeded by the still larger collections of this 
substance, and indeed the largest situated within the brain, 
— viz., the corpora striata.' — p. 744. 

8. Plan of Structure indicated by the above arrange- 
ment of white and grey substance. — The object of the present 
chapter being to ascertain, as far as possible, the mode of 
working of the brain and the connexion of its mechanism 
with the mental functions, we may here take a summary 
view of the plan of structure indicated by the foregoing 
description. We shall thus prepare the way for discussing, 
at a later stage, the precise kind of action that seems to be 
maintained throughout the different parts of the nervous 
system. 

It would appear, then, that the cerebro- spinal centre, or 
the brain and spinal cord taken together, is an aggregate of 
distinct nervous masses or parts, each made up of a mixture 
of white and grey matter. The grey matter is the vesicular 
substance, being made of cells or vesicles; the white matter 
is the fibrous substance, being made up of fibres bundled 
together. The grey matter is a terminus ; to it the fibrous 
collections tend, or from it commence. The fibrous matter 
contained within any of the cerebral masses is placed there as 
a means of communicating with some portion or other of the 
layers, or other collections, of grey substance. 

Beginning with the spinal cord, — which we have seen to 
be a rod or column of white matter or fibres, enclosing a 



PLAN OF THE CEREBRAL STRUCTURE. 29 

slender core of grey substance ; — if we trace the fibres of the 
cord upwards, we find them continuing into the medulla 
oblongata, the first and lowest portion of the brain. Of the 
whole mass of fibres entering the medulla oblongata, the 
larger portion pass up into the cerebellum and the pons 
Varolii; while a part terminates in the grey substance of the 
medulla itself; and from that grey substance other fibres take 
their rise and proceed onwards, in the company of the through- 
going fibres of the cord. Thus the emerging white matter of 
the medulla oblongata is partly the fibres that entered it, as 
a continuation of the cord, and partly the fibres originating in 
the grey central matter of the medulla, replacing as it would 
seem, those that terminated there. From the pons Varolii, 
where we come next, the white fibres advance in various 
directions ; intersecting with transverse fibres connecting the 
two halves of the cerebellum, and passing upwards towards the 
cerebrum proper. The fibres thus going upwards constitute 
the crura, peduncles, or stems of the cerebrum, and seem 
destined to terminate in the grey matter of the convoluted 
surface of the hemispheres. But in passing through the 
ganglia of the brain — the thalami optici and corpora striata — 
the arrangement described above is repeated; that is to say, 
while a large part of the fibres pass clear through the gan- 
glionic masses, the rest stop short in the grey substance of 
those masses, which grey substance gives origin to other fibres 
to pass out with those that had an uninterrupted course 
through the bodies alluded to. Both sets together — those 
passing through, and those originating in, the grey substance 
of the corpora striata, or thalami optici — constitute a portion 
of the white or fibrous substance of the hemispheres, spread- 
ing out and terminating in the grey matter, or cortical layer, 
of the convolutions. They are the first of three classes of 
fibres, described above, as constituting the white matter 
of the cerebrum; that is to say, the ascending or diverging 
class. 

Whatever number of central masses we may calculate as 
interposed between the spinal cord beneath and the convoluted 
surface of the cerebrum, the manner of communication between 



30 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

them is found to be as now stated. The fibres passing between 
one intermediate mass and another are partly transmitted and 
partly arrested. Wherever grey matter exists, there is the 
commencement or termination of white matter. The fibres 
that enter the cerebellum from the medulla oblongata, ter- 
minate in whole, or in part, in its outer layer of grey substance, 
and in that substance a new set of fibres originate to pass to 
other parts of the brain, as the corpora quadrigemina, the 
hemispheres, &c, and from one half of the cerebellum to the 
other. The fibres spreading out, as already mentioned, in the 
hemispheres towards the convoluted grey surface will have 
had very various origins. Some have perhaps come all the 
way from the extremities of the body, passing by the spinal 
cord, medulla oblongata, cerebellum, pons Varolii, thalami 
optici, &c. ; others have originated in the grey matter of the 
cord, passing without a break through all the intervening 
centres; a third class may have had their rise in the grey 
matter of the medulla oblongata ; a fourth in the grey matter 
of the pons ; a fifth in the cerebellum ; a sixth in the corpora 
quadrigemina ; others in the thalami optici or corpora striata ; 
besides other more minute sources. 

The arrangement may thus be seen to resemble the course 
of a railway train. The various central masses are like so 
many stations where the train drops a certain number of 
passengers and takes up others in their stead, whilst some are 
carried through to the final terminus. A system of telegraph 
wires might be formed to represent exactly what takes place 
in the brain. If from a general terminus in London a mass of 
wires were carried out to proceed towards Liverpool, and if 
one wire of the mass were to end at each station, while from 
the same station new wires arose, one for every station further 
on, a complete and perfectly independent connexion could be 
kept up between any two stations along the line. Calling the 
stations a, b, c, d, e ; there would be from a the London termi- 
nus, the wires, a b, ac, ad, ae ; from 6, would arise, bc,bd,be; 
from c, c d, c e ; and from d, d e. The mass of wires found on 
the road at a point between c and d, would be a e, or the one 
through-going wire, b e and bd, ce and cd; five wires in all, 



CEREBROSPINAL NERVES. 31 

which would be the number sustained throughout. This 
system of telegraph communication would be, so far as appears, 
the type of nervous communication among the various masses 
strung together in the cerebro-spinal axis or centre. 

But it is only a very small number of the fibres ending in 
the convolutions of the hemisphere that have performed the 
entire course from the extremities of the body. Indeed, some 
Anatomists have doubted the existence of any such uninter- 
rupted fibres, or at least consider that they have not been 
traced with unimpeachable certainty through the entire line 
of centres. Others, however, whom we are compelled to 
acknowledge as among the highest authorities in Anatomy 
maintain that such fibres have been undoubtedly traced. 

The application of this view of the plan of structure of the 
brain will appear in the sequel, after we have ascertained the 
distinctive functions or uses of the two kinds of nervous matter. 

OF THE CEREBRO-SPINAL NERVES. 

9. By the cerebro-spinal nerves arc; meant the connexions 
of the cerebro-spinal centre with the different parts of the 
body. These connexions consist of ramifications of nerve 
cords, threads, or bundles, arising in the central masses, and 
distributed like the blood vessels, by subdividing and spreading 
themselves over the various organs and tissues, thereby estab- 
lishing a connection between the brain and the remotest ex- 
tremities. 

' These nerves are formed of the nerve fibres already 
described, collected together and bound up in membranous 
sheaths. A larger or smaller number of fibres inclosed in a 
tubular sheath form a small round cord, usually named a 
funiculus; if a nerve be very small, it may consist of but one 
such cord, but in larger nerves several funiculi are united 
together into one or more larger bundles, which, being wrapped 
up in a common membranous covering, constitute the nerve 
(Fig. 5.) Accordingly, in dissecting a nerve, we first come 
to an outward covering, formed of cellular tissue, but often so 
strong and dense, that it might well be called fibrous. From 



32 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

this common sheath we trace laminae passing inwards, between 
the larger and smaller bundles of funiculi, and finally between 




the funiculi themselves, connecting them together as well as 
conducting and supporting the fine blood vessels which are 
distributed to the nerve.' 

' The funiculi of a nerve are not all of one size, but all are 
sufficiently large to be readily seen with the naked eye, and 
easily dissected out from each other. In a nerve so dissected 
into its component fasciculi, it is seen that these do not run 
along the nerve as parallel insulated cords, but join together 
obliquely at short distances as they proceed in their course, 
the cords resulting from such union dividing in their further 
progress to form junctions again with collateral cords; so that, 
in fact, the funiculi composing a single nervous trunk have an 
arrangement with respect to each other similar to what we 
find to hold in a plexus formed by the branches of different 
nerves. It must be distinctly understood, however, that in 
these communications the proper nerve fibres do not join 
together or coalesce. They pass off from one nervous cord to 
enter another with whose fibres they become intermixed, and 
part of them thus intermixed may again pass off to a third 
funiculus, or go through a series of funiculi and undergo still 
further intermixture. But through all these successive asso- 
ciations, the nerve fibres remain, as far as known, individually 
distinct, like interlaced threads in a rope/ 

1 Vessels. — The blood vessels of a nerve supported by the 
nerve sheath divide into very fine capillaries, said by HenM 



* * Represents a nerve consisting of many smaller cords or funiculi, 
wrapped up in a common cellular sheath. A, the nerve. B, a single 
funiculus drawn out from the rest (after Sir C. Bell).' — Quain, p. ccix. 



BRANCHING AND ORIGINS OF NERVES. S3 

to measure in the empty state not more than ¥B Voth of an inch 
in diameter. These, which are numerous, run parallel with 
the funiculi, but are connected at intervals by short transverse 
branches, so as in fact to form a network with very long narrow 
meshes. 

' Branching and Conjunction of Nerves. — Nerves in their 
progress very commonly divide into branches, and the branches 
of different nerves not unfrequently join with each other. As 
regards the arrangement of the fibres in these cases, it is to be 
observed, that, in the branching of a nerve, portions of its 
fibres successively leave the trunk and form branches ; and 
that when different nerves or their branches intercommunicate, 
fibres pass from one nerve and become associated with those 
of the other in their further progress ; but in neither case 
(unless at their peripheral terminations) is there any such 
thing as a division or splitting of an elementary nerve into 
two, or an actual junction or coalescence of two such fibres 
together/ — Sharpey; Quain, Introduction, ccix-xii. 

' Origins or Roots of the Nerves. — The cerebro-spinal 
nerves, as already said, are connected by one extremity to the 
brain or to the spinal cord, and this central extremity of a 
nerve is, in the language of anatomy, named its origin or root. 
In some cases the root is single, that is, the funiculi or fibres 
by which the nerve arises are all attached at one spot, or along 
one line or tract ; in other nerves, on the contrary, they form 
two or more separate collections, which arise apart from each 
other, and are connected with different parts of the nervous 
centre, and such nerves are accordingly said to have two 
origins or roots. In the latter case, moreover, the different 
roots of a nerve may differ not only in their anatomical cha- 
racters and connexions, but also in function, as is well exem- 
plified in the spinal nerves, each of which arises by two roots, 
■ — an anterior and a posterior ; the former containing the 
motory nerves of the fibre, the latter the sensory. 

' The fibres of a nerve, or at least a considerable share of 
them, may be traced to some depth in the substance of the 
brain or spinal cord, and hence the term ' apparent or super- 
ficial origin', has been employed to denote the place where 

D 



34 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

the root of a nerve is attached to the surface, in order to dis- 
tinguish it from the ' real or deep origin/ which is beneath 
the surface and concealed from view. 

1 To trace the different nerves back to their real origin, 
and to determine the points where, and the modes in which 
their fibres are connected with the nervous centre, is a matter 
of great difficulty and uncertainty: and, accordingly, the 
statements of anatomists respecting the origin of particular 
nerves are, in many cases, conflicting and unsatisfactory. Con- 
fining ourselves here to what applies to the nerves generally, 
it may be stated, that their roots, or part of their roots, can 
usually be followed for some way beneath the surface, in the 
form of white tracts or bands, distinguishable from the sur- 
rounding substance ; and very generally these tracts of origin 
may be traced towards deposits of grey nervous matter 
situated in the neighbourhood, such, for instance, as the 
central grey matter of the spinal cord, the grey nuclei of the 
pneumogastric and glossopharyngeal nerves, the corpora geni- 
culata (attached to the corpora quadrigemina), and other 
large grey masses connected with the origin of the optic 
nerve. It would further seem probable, that certain fibres of 
the nerve roots take their origin in these local deposits of 
grey matter, whilst others become continuous with the white 
fibres of the spinal cord or encephalon, which are themselves 
connected with the larger and more general collections of 
grey matter situated in the interior or on the surface of the 
cerebro-spinal axis. As has been already more fully stated, 
there is a difference of opinion as to the mode in which 
the nerve fibres, supposed to arise in the grey matter, are con- 
nected with its elements; some anatomists describing them as 
forming loops or arches in the grey matter, passing into it, as 
it were, and returning, whilst others maintain that the fibres 
are prolonged from the caudate nerve cells/ — Id. ccxiii-v. 

' Termination or Peripheral Extremity of Nerves. — The 
results of modern microscopic discovery seemed for a time to 
lead to the conclusion that the fibres of nerves do not, strictly 
speaking, end in the tissues in which they were distributed, 
but merely dip into those tissues, as it were, and, after forming 



TERMINATION OF NERVES. 35 

slings or loops of greater or less width, return sooner or later 
to the nervous trunks. The further progress of inquiry has, 
however, failed to establish the generality of this conclusion, 
and has even gone far to disprove the existence of the alleged 
mode of termination in various cases, in which it had been 
previously held to take place : and indeed it must be admitted 
that the arrangement of the nervous fibres at their peripheral 
extremities is still but imperfectly understood, as will appear 
from the following summary of what is at present known on 
the subject/ 

Passing over the details of this very interesting inquiry, we 
must be content with the statement of the conclusions arrived at. 

' From the account of the peripheral extremities of the 
nerves, it will be apparent, — First, that the disposition of 
their elementary fibres in terminal loops, or in terminal 
plexuses, through which they return again towards the parent 
trunks, is by no means general : that, as far as known, they 
more commonly end by simply truncated, or slightly swollen 
extremities, as in the instance of those entering the Pacinian 
bodies, or become gradually lost to the sight in the sur- 
rounding tissue, usually after considerable reduction in size, 
and after laying aside their dark outline, probably from pri- 
vation of their white substance. That even where, apparently, 
terminal loops are observed, it is difficult to say whether these 
may not in some cases, be caused by serpentine windings in 
the fibres previous to their actual termination, which may 
itself be hidden from view. Secondly, that elementary nerve 
fibres, although, as far as is known, they keep entire and 
distinct in their course along the nerves, do in various in- 
stances actually divide into branches, and in some cases unite 
or inosculate with each other, in approaching their termination. 
Thirdly, that in certain cases the fibres of nerves come into 
near relation at their peripheral extremities with cells resem- 
bling the nerve cells of the brain and ganglia.' — Id. ccxvi, ccxxiv. 

Thus in comparing the termination of the blood vessels 
with the termination of the nerves, we find a dissimilarity or 
contrast, indicating some radical difference in the way that 
the two very different influences, blood and nervous force, 

D 2 



36 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

are brought to bear upon the various tissues. In the case 
of the circulation of the blood, the arteries are seen to sub- 
divide till they reach their smallest ramifications in the 
capillaries, which capillaries are in contact with the tissues, 
and supply nourishing material through their coats or walls, 
by an oozing or sweating process; the stream passes on 
through the capillaries without interruption into the veins, 
where it is accumulated by flowing from the smaller branches 
into the larger, and at length reaches the heart; being thus 
kept in close channels large or small through the entire circuit 
of the body. But although the nerves are arranged on the 
plan of carrying one influence outward, and bringing another 
back from the same spot, the distinct sets of nerves used for 
the two purposes, do not join or become continuous at their 
extremities like arteries and veins; they seem rather to termi- 
nate absolutely and apart in the tissues; instead of a self- 
contained circuit, the course is broken or interrupted by the 
muscular, mucous, or other tissue where they end. This break 
is an important fact in the nervous structure; for although as 
yet we may not be able to trace the full meaning of it, it 
furnishes several instructive suggestions; and we shall pro- 
bably avail ourselves of some of these in some of the dis- 
cussions that are afterwards to occupy our attention. 

FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

10. Hitherto we have restricted our attention to the 
structure and arrangement of parts in the nervous mechanism: 
including under that head the central masses and the ramify- 
ing threads or cords passing between the centres and the various 
regions of the body. The functions, uses, or mode of operation, 
of those centres and ramifying cords have now to be considered. 
The experimental enquiries of recent years have thrown much 
light upon this obscure and mysterious subject ; and the 
microscopic investigation of the nervous substance, from which 
we have obtained our knowledge of the distinctive structure 
of the grey and white matter, has tended greatly to simplify 
the study of nervous action. Reversing the order observed 



FUNCTIONS OF THE NERVES. 37 

above in the description of structure, I shall take up the 
subject of function, first as regards the Nerves, and next as 
regards the Nerve Centres. 

Functions of the Nerves. 

1 1. The Nerves are divided into two classes according as 
they proceed from the Spinal Cord, or issue direct from the 
Brain. The first class, called the Spinal Nerves, is the most 
numerous. It is not implied that these nerves have no con- 
nexion with the brain, but merely that their place of emer- 
gence or 'superficial origin ' is in the Spinal Cord. The 
arrangement is to be looked upon as a matter of local con- 
venience. The nerves destined for the lower limbs do not 
leave the general trunk until they approach the neighbour- 
hood that they are to supply : that is, they are prolonged 
within the spine to its lower extremity ; whilst those branching 
towards the arms emerge in the neck and between the 
shoulders. On the other hand, the nerves that supply the 
face and head leave the brain at once by openings in the 
skull ; these are the Cerebral Nerves. There is no substantial 
difference of nature between the two classes. 

In the mode of junction of the Spinal Nerves with the 
Spinal Cord a peculiarity is observed of great importance in 
the present subject. I have already noticed the fact that they 
issue from the spine in pairs, one pair between every two 
vertebrae ; there are in all thirty-one couples. Each couple 
contains a right and a left member, for distribution to the 
right and left sides of the body. This part of the arrangement 
is likewise a matter of local convenience. But, further, when 
one individual of these emerging couples is examined, say a 
right branch, we find that this branch does not arise from the 
cord single ; it springs from two roots, and these after pro- 
ceeding apart for a short way, unite in the one single nerve that 
is seen to issue from between the vertebrae on the right side. 
The same holds of any left branch that may be fixed upon ; 
the connexion with the cord is not single, but double. The 
smaller of the two roots in each case proceeds from the fore 
part of the cord, and is called the anterior root ; the other or 



38 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

larger, proceeds from the hinder portion of the cord, and is 
called the posterior root. This last root, the posterior, is dis- 
tinguished in another point, besides its greater size. Just 
after leaving the cord there is a ganglion or little swelling 
formed upon it, this ganglion being composed in part of grey 
matter, and being to appearance of the nature of a nerve 
centre. Beyond the ganglion, the two roots mingle and con- 
stitute the one nerve seen to emerge from the spine.*" 

12. Having thus noticed two classifications of the Nerves, 
the one, — into Spinal and Cerebral — unimportant as respects 
function, the other, — into anterior and posterior roots — highly 
important, as will be seen ; we now proceed to state what the 
function or use of nerve is. The function of a nerve is to 
transmit impressions, influences, or stimuli, from one vart 
of the system to another. The nerves originate nothing ; they 
are exclusively a medium of communication ; they have the 
carrying function. It is not easy to describe the nature of 
the influence that passes along the various spinal and cerebral 
ramifications ; but whatever that influence be, we do not find 
it to be generated in the fibrous bundles of the nerve substance, 
nor can it be absorbed there. Hence the term 'conductor' 
applied to the lines of nerve passing to and fro throughout the 
body. These are in their essential function telegraph wires ; 
for although the force conveyed by a nerve differs from the 
force conveyed by a telegraphic wire, there is an absolute 
sameness in this, that the influence is generated at one spot 
and transmitted to another through an intermediate substance, 
which substance acts the carrier part solely. When a nerve 
fibre is not employed in transmitting an influence from one 
part to another, it sleeps, or is wholly idle and inert. We 
know of no other mode of employing a nerve thread than in 
conduction ; and whatever may be the operations that any 
branch or twig is concerned in maintaining, the part per- 
formed by it consists simply and solely in carrying an impulse, 
given to it at one extremity, onwards to the other extremity. 



* See Fig. 2, p. 16. 



NERVES ARE CONDUCTORS. 39 

Neither feeling nor action will start up at any point on the 
line of a nervous bundle ; but through the instrumentality of 
transmission, every nerve may be the means of causing either 
the one or the other. 

The experimental proofs of this position are numerous, 
and they are now reckoned conclusive. If a main trunk nerve 
supplying a limb be cut through, all sensation in the limb 
ceases, and also all power of movement. The nerve with its 
numerous branches still remains, but, dissevered from the 
centres, it has no influence ; the entire ramifications might as 
well be torn out of the limb. The blood circulates and the 
parts are nourished, but for the purposes of feeling or action 
the member is excommunicated, dead. The telegraph wire 
is cut. 

If, instead of cutting the nerve through, we prick or irritate 
it, an influence is generated and is made to appear by causing 
both feeling and movement. Whether the irritation is applied 
high or low, near the nervous centres or near the extremities 
of the body, the effect is precisely the same. The pricking 
originates an impression or stimulus, which the nerve conveys 
through its whole length ; wherever that nerve ramifies, in 
each place do we note feeling or movement, or both. The 
nerve neither begins nor swallows up the influence; but carries 
forward and discharges it. Vary the experiment as we may, 
the interpretation to be put upon the result is of one unvary- 
ing tenor.* 

* It seems singular that such an action as pricking a nerve with the 
point of a needle, pinching it, electrifying it, dropping pungent liquids 
upon it, should set a-going the same kind of influence as comes from its own 
proper centres. But this is from the peculiarity of the nerve, and not 
from any identity between the influence of a nerve centre and the influence 
of a mechanical irritation, electrical action, or chemical corrosion. A nerve 
is so constituted that it will carry one set of influences and no other. If 
we are able to disturb it at all, so as to propagate any kind of influence, 
this will be the influence that the nerve is accustomed to propagate. It 
will be an influence either setting some part in motion, or producing sen- 
sation somewhere. Because we burn it with an acid at one point, it will 
not therefore convey to the extremities a corroding influence, as if acid 
were poured out at the end of every fibre ; it will simply cause either a 
convulsive action of the muscles, or a strong sense of pain in the parts 
where its terminations lie. The fibres are formed to transmit a peculiar 
and distinct influence, and they will either take on the bent requisite for 



40 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

13. This property of communication or conduction, the 
exclusive function of the nerve threads, belongs to all the 
fibrous masses, that is, to the white matter of the nervous 
system. The conveying structure is the fibrous; a different 
function is reserved for the grey matter, as we shall presently 
see, — that of originating influence. Every separate fibre is a 
wire, and carries its own independent stimulus, although bound 
up with thousands of other fibres in the same cord or tract. 
Wherever white matter exists, lines of communication are 
established. We recognise lines of conduction or transmission 
not only between the remote organs of the body and the 
cerebro-spinal centre, but also throughout the different parts of 
the encephalon and spinal cord ; in other words, we must admit 
the existence of currents and counter currents in the interior 
of the brain itself. All those connecting bands of fibres, or 
white substance, known as peduncles of the cerebrum and 
cerebellum, the commissures of the cerebrum, and all the 
white matter in the interior of the hemispheres underneath 
the convolutions, must be looked upon as employed in receiving 
influences from one nervous centre or portion of the cerebral 
mass, to discharge them in another. A bundle of white fibres 
in the main serves no other purpose in the heart of the cere- 
brum than a similar bundle serves in passing along the arm 
or over the face. 

14. We have remarked of the nerves that they convey 
influence for the two distinct ends of causing action and causing 
feeling. For action, the influence must proceed outwards 
from the centres to the active organs ; a stimulus from the 
brain or spinal cord has to be transmitted to the limbs, trunk, 
head, eyes, mouth, voice, or other parts that are to be set in 



transmitting that influence, or remain dormant. It so happens, however, 
that the substance of nerve is extremely susceptible, and very readily falls 
into the active propagating attitude ; whence influences very unlike those 
coming from the proper sources of influence may disturb the quiescent 
condition and set on the very current belonging to the legitimate stimulus. 
This gives to the fibrous substance of nerve, not an originating but a 
determining power, it will take on only one kind of influence, only one 
sort of message will be carried by it. 



MOTOR AND SENTIENT NERVES. 41 

motion. For feeling, the influence must pass inwards. In a 
sensation of hearing, for example, an impression made on the 
sensitive surface of the ear is conveyed by the nerve of hearing 
towards the cerebral centres. Now it is found that different 
sets of nerves are employed for those two purposes ; one class 
being exclusively devoted to the outward transmission of sti- 
mulants to action or movement, while the other class is equally 
confined to the office of conveying influence centrewards, for 
the ends of sensation or feeling. The first of these two classes 
is that named efferent (out-carrying) nerves, the second com- 
prises the afferent (in-carrying) nerves. In every individual 
fibre it would appear that the influence always follows one 
direction. No single nerve can combine both functions. 

It is further known, since the discovery of Sir Charles 
Bell, that one of the two roots of the spinal nerves is entirely 
composed of nerves conveying the outward stimulus ; these 
are, therefore, purely nerves of motion, ' motor nerves.' The 
other root consists of fibres transmitting influence from the 
various parts of the body inwards to the centres ; these are 
called the sentient nerves. (They are not all sentient in 
the full sense of word, as will be afterwards explained.) The 
anterior roots are the motor nerves ; the posterior roots are 
the in-carrying or afferent nerves. On these last roots, the 
posterior, the ganglionic swellings occur ; and both in the 
spinal nerves and in those emerging at once from the brain 
by openings in the cranium, the occurrence of a bead is a 
proof that the nerve is of the in-carrying or sentient class. 

In the experiments above described as made upon trunk 
nerves of an arm or leg, effects both of movement and sensa- 
tion were seen to follow ; the limb was thrown into convulsive 
movements, and the animal showed all the symptoms of being 
in bodily pain. If, now, instead of a main trunk, the trial is 
made upon one of the roots of a spinal nerve, only one single 
effect will be produced, — motion without sensation, or sensa- 
tion without motion of the part. If an anterior root is pricked 
or irritated, movements of some part of the body will follow, 
showing that an active stimulus has been discharged upon a 
certain number of muscles. If a posterior or ganglionic root 



42 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

is pricked, the animal will show symptoms of pain, and the 
pain will be mentally referred to the part where the filaments 
of the nerve are distributed. If the nerve is one proceeding 
to the leg, there will be a feeling of pain in the leg ; but there 
will be no instantaneous convulsions and contractions of the 
limb, such as are produced by irritating an anterior root. All 
the movements that an animal makes under the stimulus of a 
sentient root, are consequent on the sensation of pain ; they 
are not the direct result of the irritating application. In one 
of the trunk nerves of an arm or leg, both motor and sentient 
fibres are mixed up, which is the reason of the mixed effect 
in the first experiment above mentioned. 

15. Experiments with pure nerves, that is, with motor 
fibres alone, or sentient fibres alone, are best made upon the 
nerves of the head, — the Cerebral Nerves. A certain number 
of these are exclusively motor, certain others are exclusively 
sentient, while a third kind are mixed, like the spinal nerves 
beyond the point of junction of the two roots. 

The Cerebral Nerves are divided into nine pairs, some of 
these being considered as admitting of farther subdivision. 
Four are enumerated as nerves of pure sensation : — the nerve 
of smell (olfactory nerve, 1st pair); the nerve of sight (optic 
nerve, 2nd pair); the nerve of sensation of the tongue and 
face generally (5th pair) ; the nerve of hearing (auditory nerve, 
part of the 7th pair). These nerves, therefore, are exclusively 
engaged in transmitting influence from the surfaces of special 
sense, the nose, eyes, ears, tongue, and face, towards the cere- 
bral mass. Five nerves are enumerated as purely motor or 
out-carrying : — the nerve supplying the four recti (or rectan- 
gularly arranged) muscles of the eye, and sustaining its 
ordinary movements (motor coramunis oculorum, 3rd pair) ; 
the nerve supplying the superior oblique muscle of the eye 
(trochlearis, 4th pair) ; the nerve distributed to the external 
rectus muscle of the eye, and serving to abduct the two eyes 
by an independent stimulus requisite in adjusting the eyes to 
different distances (abducent, 6th pair) ; the trunk nerve for 
setting on the movements of the face and features (2nd part 



FUNCTIONS OF THE SPINAL COED. 43 

of 7th pair) ; the nerve for moving the tongue (9th pair). The 
pair reckoned the 8th, consists of sensitive fibres distributed 
to the tongue, throat, lungs, and stomach, and also of motor 
fibres distributed to muscles. 

If any one of the four sensitive nerves issuing from the 
cranium be cut through, sensation in the connected organ is 
lost ; disease will produce the same effect. Injury in the 
optic nerve causes blindness, in the auditory nerve deafness. 
If any one of them is irritated by pricking, corrosion, or elec- 
tricity, a sensation is produced of the kind proper to the 
nerve ; if the olfactory nerve, a smell is felt ; the optic, a flash 
of light ; the auditory, a sound ; but no movement is gene- 
rated. If any one of the five motor pairs is cut, the cor- 
responding muscles cease to act ; they are said to be paralysed, 
an effect also produced by nervous disease. If the third pair 
were cut, the motion of the eyeballs would cease, there would 
no longer be any power of directing the gaze at pleasure, the 
most brilliant spectacle would fail to command the sweeping 
glances of the eye. If the moving portion of the seventh pair 
were cut on one side, all the muscles of the face on that side 
would lose their tension, and the equipoise of the two sides 
being thus destroyed, the face would be set awry, by the action 
of the unparalysed muscles. 

By experiments of this nature the functions of the several 
cerebral nerves have been successively ascertained. In like 
manner, the discovery of Sir Charles Bell as to the compound 
nature of the spinal nerves has been fully confirmed. It has 
been shown beyond the possibility of doubt, that the nerve 
fibres are of two distinct classes, with different functions, and 
that the same fibre never serves both functions ; that a current 
peculiar to each fibre sets in always in one direction ; and that 
nothing beyond a conducting character ever belongs to the 
nerve bundles, or to the fibrous aggregates, the white sub- 
stance, of the cerebro-spinal system. 

Functions of the Spinal Cord and Medulla Oblongata. 
16. We have now to speak of the Centres, or the masses 



44 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

that make up the cerebrospinal axis, — the brain and spinal 
cord. These central masses all contain grey substance, the 
cellular or vesicular matter, wherein the nerve fibres are 
known, in some cases if not all, to terminate. None of them 
is exclusively composed of grey matter, for within the boun- 
daries of each mass a quantity of the communicating fibres 
occur. But their peculiar or distinctive character is imparted 
by the grey substance that they contain. By setting forth 
the ascertained functions of these masses in succession, we 
shall arrive at some notion of the powers and properties of 
the grey matter, just as in discussing the nerve fibres we have 
obtained a knowledge of the use of the white substance 
whether in the nerve ramifications, or in the interior of the 
centres. 

17. With regard to the Spinal Cord, we find, in the first 
place, that it is necessary to sensation and to voluntary 
movement (movement from feeling) throughout the entire 
trunk and extremities of the body. If the cord is cut across 
at any part, all feeling is lost, and all power of movement by 
the will, everywhere below that place, or in every portion of 
the body where the nerves arising beyond the cut are distri- 
buted. If the division is made far down in the back, the 
lower limbs are the parts principally paralysed; from them 
feeling comes no more, nor is it possible to move them by 
any mental effort. If the cut is in the neck, the arms, trunk, 
and legs are alike paralysed. It becomes evident that the 
continuity of the cord with the brain is necessary in order to 
connect the mental system with the bodily members. The 
cord by itself will not give the power either of sensation or of 
voluntary movement. We must regard this portion of the 
cerebro-spinal axis as a main channel of nervous conveyance 
for sensation and voluntary action, between the brain, and 
the trunk, and extremities of the body. The nerve ramifica- 
tions are here, as it were, gathered together into one rope or 
bundle for convenient transmission to and from the masses of 
the encephalon. To this extent, the cord is not a centre, but 
an assemblage of the general system of ramifying or com- 






THE SPINAL CORD A CENTRE. 45 

municating fibres; we may look upon it as the trunk of the 
tree, the final stream of the river system. 

If now we make experiments upon the cord when dis- 
severed from the brain, we discover that a power of producing 
movements, though not voluntary, still remains. On irritating 
any portion of the substance, movements of the limbs are 
observed. This effect might, no doubt, arise from the con- 
tinuity of the part with some of the motor nerves; for we 
have seen that movements in a limb are caused by pinching 
one of the nerves that supply the limb. But there is a mode 
of trying the experiment so as to prove decidedly that the 
spinal cord is itself a source of movement; that is, to prick 
the skin of the toes; when this is done we find that a con- 
vulsive stimulus instantly returns upon the limb and throws 
it into action. Hence we infer that an impression arising on 
the surface of the body and conveyed to the spinal cord, but 
not to the brain, causes the cord to send forth a motor 
stimulus to the moveable organs, a phenomenon, moreover, 
that ceases on the destruction of the cord. 

' In most instances where the spinal cord has been divided, 
whether by design or accident, it has been found that 
although the will cannot move the paralysed parts, move- 
ments do occur in them of which the individual is uncon- 
scious, and which he is wholly unable to prevent. These take 
place sometimes as if spontaneously, at other times as the 
effect of the application of a stimulus to some surface supplied 
by spinal nerves. The apparently spontaneous movements 
frequently resemble voluntary actions so closely, that it is 
almost impossible to distinguish them/ 

' The following experiments serve to illustrate these 
actions : — 

' If a frog be pithed by dividing the spinal cord between 
the occipital hole and the first vertebra, an universal convulsion 
takes place while the knife is passing through the nervous 
centre. This, however, quickly subsides ; and, if the animal 
be placed on the table, he will assume his ordinary position of 
rest. In some exceptional cases, however, frequent combined 
movements of the lower extremities will take place for a longer 



46 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

or shorter time after the operation ; when all such disturbance 
has ceased, the animal remains perfectly quiet, and as if in 
repose, nor does there appear to be the slightest expression of 
pain or suffering. He is quite unable to move by any volun- 
tary effort. However one may try to frighten him, he remains 
in the same place and posture. If now a toe be pinched, 
instantly the limb is drawn up, or he seems to push away the 
irritating agent, and then draws up the leg again into its old 
position. Sometimes a stimulus of this kind causes both limbs 
10 be moved violently backwards. A similar movement 
follows stimulation of the anus. If the skin be pinched at 
any part, some neighbouring muscle or muscles will be thrown 
into action. Irritation of the anterior extremities will occasion 
movements in them : but it is worthy of note, that these 
movements are seldom so energetic as those of the lower 
extremities/ — Todd and Bowman, I., 308-9. 

These experiments prove beyond a doubt that a circle of 
nervous action is completed by the spinal cord in its isolation 
from the brain. It is manifest that the in-carrying nerves 
must be in communication with out-carrying or motor nerves, 
in the interior of the spinal substance, a communication that 
renders the cord, to all intents and purposes, a nerve centre, 
and not merely an aggregate or bundle of nerve conductors. 
This property of sending out motor power is believed to depend 
upon the grey matter that is enclosed in the cord ; for no 
reflex force is ever shown without the intervention of a certain 
portion of grey substance ; and such reflected power is more 
energetic as the grey or vesicular matter exists in larger 
quantity. The cord is therefore one of the power-originating 
portions of the nervous system ; and investigation has deter- 
mined pretty accurately what kind of power it yields, and for 
what purposes in the animal economy. I shall here present a 
brief summary of the principal active functions sustained or 
assisted by the central energy lodged in this part. 

18. In describing the functions of the cord it is convenient 
to include the Medulla Oblongata, with which the cord is 
continuous in structure, and which is found to possess the same 



AUTOMATIC OR REFLEX ACTIONS. 47 

essential characters. As a centre the medulla originates and 
sustains movements independent of the cerebrum ; those 
movements need not the stimulus of feeling nor that exertion 
consequent upon feeling, that we term volition. By classing 
the spinal cord and medulla oblongata together, and compre- 
hending along with these the corpora quadrigemina and pons 
Varolii, and studying this aggregate apart from the rest of the 
brain, we seem to draw a broad line — the broadest that can 
be drawn anywhere within the cerebro-spinal axis, between 
the seat of stimuli and actions without feeling, and the seat 
of stimuli and actions with feeling ; between the involuntary 
and the voluntary — between body and mind. The actions 
maintained by the cord and medulla oblongata resemble many 
of the true mental actions ; they actuate the same muscles, the 
same moveable parts, but inasmuch as they do not require 
feeling as an indispensable condition of their performance, 
they are excluded from the province, marked by our definition 
of mind. They are termed automatic or self-moved actions, 
aDd also reflex actions. The enumeration of the functions of 
the cord will be an enumeration of this class of actions which 
seem to be mental but are not. 

(i.) Movements connected with the process of Digestion. 
This process requires a series of movements to be kejDt-up for 
passing the food along the different stages of the alimentary 
canal, to undergo its various changes there. The first opera- 
tion upon the food in the mouth, — the chewing and masticat- 
ing — is voluntary, and requires the stimulus of the brain. On 
passing to the back part of the tongue, the food enters the bag 
of the throat, or pharynx, and is thence projected down the 
gullet by contractions and movements that are involuntary ; 
the mind has no control over them, and scarcely any feeling 
or consciousness of their taking place. These movements are 
due to the medulla oblongata. The contact of the food with 
the surface of the throat makes an impression on certain 
nerves distributed on that surface ; these nerves transmit an 
influence to the medulla oblongata, and there returns a 
stimulus to the muscles of the pharynx, which muscles are in 
•connexion with the same centre through motor nerves. In 



48 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

this manner, the food is propelled onwards by the muscular 
contractions of the tube, and enters the stomach. The mind 
is utterly excluded from participation in this effect, being 
unable either to assist or retard the progress of the mass, and 
except at the two extremities, being hardly aware of the stage 
that is reached at any moment. This function illustrates 
what is often said of the medulla oblongata and the cord, that 
they give birth to the movements necessary for keeping up 
the organic processes. 

(2.) Connected with the Respiration, there are certain 
reflex, or automatic, movements. The action of breathing is 
performed by means of a number of muscles, but these, unlike 
the muscles of the alimentary region, are also the instruments 
of the will in voluntary operations. The muscles of the chest 
and abdomen are employed in the acts of breathing ; in taking 
in breath the lungs are expanded by the muscles of the chest, 
and in expiration the abdominal muscles contract the chest and 
force out the contained air. This action goes on whether we 
wake or sleep, being involuntary, and the seat of power in this 
case is found to be the medulla oblongata. There passes to 
and fro, between the muscles and the grey matter of the 
medulla, a nervous stimulus ; the two opposing sets of muscles 
are acted on by turns, and an alternating movement is thus 
kept up from the first moment of drawing breath to the last. 
There is more here than a simple reflex stimulus, such as 
described in the actions of a pithed frog. The case is not one 
where irritation or contact with a surface, excites a single 
group of muscles in one way, as when the frog's limb is drawn 
up on the pinching of the toe. We have a higher complica- 
tion, a stage in advance towards combined and regulated 
action, the kind of action that attains its highest pitch under 
the mental organization, being developed to some small extent 
within the automatic, or spinal system. In the propulsion of 
food there is in reality a compound or double action, a con- 
traction along the length of the gut with a contraction of the 
thickness, and this action follows a certain order or rhythm so 
as to move the food always in one way ; but in breathing the 
compound action is of a more decided and palpable kind, inas- 






RESPIRATORY MOVEMENTS. 49 

much as the two acts are opposed to each other and must take 
place by turns. The commencing stimulus in this case requires 
to be a muscular stimulus, an effect arising out of the action of 
muscles, and not the irritation or compression of a surface. The 
completed action, the fully accomplished contraction, of one set 
of muscles must affect the centre so as to commence the action 
of the other set There would require to be distributed to the 
same muscles two classes of nerves, one for conveying influence 
inward to the medulla oblongata, the other for receiving the 
motor stimulus arising there; and the circles would require to 
be so organized, that the nerves conveying influence inward 
from the muscles of inspiration should pass to those portions 
of the grey substance of the medulla that send out motor 
nerves to supply the muscles of expiration ; and, conversely, 
the ingoing nerves from the last named set should be in rela- 
tion with the motor nerves belonging to the other set, those of 
inspiration ; while the stimulus proper to these in carrying 
nerves, the influence that they are adapted to convey, should 
be that arising from the full and complete contraction of their 
respective muscles. Such is the arrangement that we are 
obliged to assume or supjDose, in order to account for the 
double action. It is important for us to recognise this mode 
of mechanism in this its simplest example, as we shall have 
reason for believing that the same mode prevails extensively 
throughout the bodily and mental constitution.* 

There are certain special movements occasionally executed 
by the respiratory apparatus likewise belonging to the auto- 
matic or reflex class. Coughing is one of those. The stimulus 
in this case, however, is a true surface stimulus ; the contact 
of foreign matter with the interior wall of the bronchial tubes 
is the cause of the spasmodic movement. The irritation of 
the bronchial surface originates a stimulus propagated to that 



* When the sensory nerve distributed to the surface of the lungs is 
cut through, the breathing action is weakened, showing that a certain 
amount of stimulus is derived from the action going on throughout the 
surface. If, farther, the brain is paralyzed by any poison, the respiration 
is still more enfeebled, leading us to infer that the brain contributes to the 
breathing activity. What remains after deducting those two aids requires 
the supposition made in the text to account for it. 

E 



50 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

part of the medulla oblongata that sustains the action of the 
lungs. The consequence is a momentary increase of the 
expiratory force, the glottis being closed and opened suddenly, 
so as to amount to an explosion, or a shot, which propels the 
material out of the tube. The action of the lungs is peculiarly 
liable to be raised to this explosive pitch, owing, we may 
suppose, to the readiness of the medulla oblongata to give off 
sudden discharges of central energy. Sneezing differs from 
coughing in the circumstance that the seat of irritation is the 
nose. The course of the explosive current is on that account 
directed through the nostrils. 

Among the reflex influences exerted upon the lungs through 
spinal intervention we are to include the stimulus of cold 
suddenly applied ; which stimulus acting on the surface of the 
lungs in the shape of cold air, or on any part of the skin, as 
in the cold bath, reinforces the breathing energy. This 
influence is accompanied with a very keen sensation, but the 
instantaneous reaction that increases the movement of the 
lungs is believed to be entirely independent of sensation or 
will, and is attributed with appearance of reason to the 
medulla oblongata. The hysteric laugh, which is one of the 
effects of cold, points to the mediation of the medulla even in 
the effects arising from the sensation. 

(3.) The winking of the eyes is essentially automatic. 
Although not entirely withdrawn from the control of the 
mental centres, this movement of the eyelids usually goes on 
independent of these centres. The stimulus to the movement 
is a surface stimulus, apparently due to the liquid that washes 
the eye, and in so doing comes in contact with the inner 
surface of the upper eye-lid. When an action takes place on 
this inner surface an influence is transmitted inwards to some 
centre,* and there is reflected a stimulus to the muscle that 
closes the lids. One may try the experiment by touching the 
edge or inner surface of the upper eye-lid with anything solid ; 
instantly there is produced a spasmodic flutter of the eye-lid, or 



* Probably the corpora quadrigemina. 



MUSCULAR TONICITY. 51 

a very rapid succession of winks. The reflex act goes to closing 
the eye, and the opening is effected by the muscles that keep 
the eye open during the ordinary waking state. In sleep, the 
winking muscle is unresisted and keeps the eyes shut. The 
activity of this muscle, (called the orbicularis) is shown by this 
fact to be purely reflex, for no voluntary movement is sustained 
when we are asleep. 

(4) It is to be considered how far the muscular move- 
ments generally, the locomotive and other actions of the body 
at large, are sustained by the spinal cord. We have already 
seen that convulsive movements of the linibs can be excited in 
a decapitated animal; and the question arises, does the cord 
keep up any of the regulated motions of the animal body, such 
as walking, running, flying, swimming, &c. The answer is 
that the cord does not seem capable of maintaining these 
motions. For, although there exists an innate power of per- 
forming them in many cases, other centres besides the cord 
are essential to their performance. In fact, the cerebellum is 
looked upon as the centre of the higher order of combined 
actions, notwithstanding that one pair of alternating move- 
ments, as in breathing, can be kept up by the cord alone. 
The locomotive movements of animals immediately after being 
decapitated are not a proof of the power of the cord acting by 
itself, inasmuch as these may be owing to the yet unexhausted 
stimulus of the brain, or they may be actions induced upon 
the cord, in consequence of habit. 

There is one instance of muscular action by most physio- 
logists ascribed to the spinal cord, and believed to have a 
peculiar interest in this point of view ; that is, the tension, 
tone, or tonicity of the muscles. By this is meant the fact 
that a muscle is never wholly relaxed while the animal is alive. 
Even in the perfect repose of sleep there is yet a certain 
vigour of contraction inhering in all the muscles of the body p 
The force of contraction is increased at the moment of 
wakening, and still more when an effort is to be made, but at 
no time is the relaxation total ; the limbs never dangle like a 
loosely constructed doll until after the animal is dead. Now 
there is a certain amount of this permanent contractile force 

E 2 



52 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

fairly ascribable to the muscle's own vitality apart from any 
nerve stimulus whatever. For we are not to suppose that the 
contractility of muscle is wholly dependent on the conveyed 
influence of nerve centres ; whence there is some difficulty in 
ascertaining how much of the effect is derived and how much 
inherent. 

The experiments relied upon for showing that the perma- 
nent tension of the muscle is in part due to spinal influence 
are very striking and not easily explained away. I quote from 
Dr. Carpenter : ' It has been proved by Dr. Marshall Hall 
that the muscular Tension is not dependent on the influence 
of the Brain but upon that of the Spinal Cord, as the following 
experiments demonstrate : ' Two Rabbits were taken : from 
one the head was removed ; from the other also the head was 
removed, and the spinal marrow was cautiously destroyed with 
a sharp instrument : the limbs of the former retained a certain 
degree of firmness and elasticity ; those of the second were 
perfectly lax/ Again : ' The limbs and tail of a decapitated 
turtle possessed a certain degree of firmness and tone, recoiled 
on being drawn from their position, and moved with energy 
on the application of a stimulus. On withdrawing the spinal 
marrow gently out of its canal, all these phenomena ceased. 
The limbs were no longer obedient to stimuli, and became 
perfectly placid, having lost all their resilience. The sphincter 
lost its circular form and contracted state, becoming lax, flaccid, 
and shapeless. The tail was flaccid/ — (Carpenter, p. 700). 
Here we see that the disconnecting of the muscles from the 
brain still left them in a tense condition, while that tension 
gives way the instant the spinal cord is removed. A current 
of nervous stimulus is thus shown to be perpetually derived 
from the cord to the muscles in connexion with it ; any im- 
pression made upon the surface or extremities of a limb 
suddenly increases this current in some one direction, but does 
not create it entirely. We are therefore led to infer that the 
nerve centres of the spine have in them a constant charge of 
nervous energy, which flows out at all times, a force originating 
there independently of the stimulus of outward impressions, 
and merely yielding itself in greater abundance under such 



FUNCTIONS OF THE CEREBRAL HEMISPHERES. 53 

outward stimulus. This is an extremely important fact which- 
ever way we view it, and one that will again force itself upon 
our notice. 

So much for Reflex actions and the Functions of the 
Spinal Cord. 

Functions of the lesser grey centres of the Brain. 

19. The principal bodies of the nature of centres situated 
between the medulla oblongata and the convoluted hemi- 
spheres of the brain, have been already enumerated. There 
are four masses of consj)icuous size and position, the pons 
Varolii, the corpora quadrigemina, the thalami optici, the 
corpora striata. Experiments made upon these bodies similar 
to those made on the cord produce like results ; any irritation 
applied to any one of them produces both sensation and move- 
ments. With the exception of the corpora quadrigemina, 
a centre intimately connected with vision, the functions are 
not determined in the case of any of them. The thalami 
optici and corpora striata, from their size, and the amount of 
grey matter they contain, are likely to be influential bodies, 
but what precise purpose they perform is a subject of un- 
certain speculation. 

Functions of the Cerebral Hemispheres. 

20. The convoluted hemispheres of the brain enclose 
within them the above-mentioned masses or centres, and both 
the convolutions and these centres are included in the cere- 
brum. Experiments have been made with a view of deter- 
mining the characteristic functions of this cerebral mass, so 
large in the human brain, although dwindling to the most in- 
significant dimensions in the lowest vertebrate animals, 
namely, reptiles and fishes. 

The convolutions are the portion most accessible to opera- 
tions. The hemispheres have been seen above to consist of an 
outer layer of convoluted grey matter and an interior mass 
of white, fibrous, or connecting matter. When irritation is 
applied to the hemispheres, as by pricking or cutting, we find a 



54 OF THE NEKVOUS SYSTEM. 

remarkable absence of the effects manifested in the other 
centres. Neither feeling nor movement is produced. This 
marks a very great distinction between the hemispheres and 
the whole of the ganglia and centres lying beneath them. 

The entire removal of the hemisphere including the corpus 
striatum and thalamus, lowers the power of the animal, but 
does not destroy any of the bodily or mental functions. 

Pressure from above downwards produces stupor. 

The removal of both hemispheres in an animal has the 
following results : — 

First. Sight and hearing are entirely lost. 

Second. Consciousness, or feeling, seems utterly abolished : 
so that whatever bodily activity may survive, the mental life 
is extinct. 

Third. All power of moving for an end, all forethought, 
purpose, or volition, is entirely extinguished. This is an in- 
evitable consequence of the loss of feeling ; for with feeling, 
the actions stimulated or guided by feeling must disappear. 

Fourth. The power of accomplishing many connected 
movements still remains. The actions of flying or walking 
may be sustained after the loss of the hemispheres, but in 
that case a stimulus from without is necessary in order to 
commence the action. As a matter of course the Automatic 
actions, those that we have seen to go on in the decapitated 
or acephalous animal may still proceed. 

Thus it appears that the hemispheres of the brain are in- 
dispensable to the exercise of our two highest senses, and to 
consciousness and feeling-prompted action, or volition. In so 
far as Intelligence demands the exercise of those functions, it, 
too, must perish. The actions that remain are at best the 
actions of a somnambulist. Mind is thus pre-eminently asso- 
ciated with the cerebral hemispheres. 

Functions of the Cerebellum. 

21. The experiments made upon the cerebellum, and the 
inferences founded on its comparative size in different animals, 
have led physiologists to assign to it the function of harmo- 



FUNCTIONS OF THE CEREBELLUM. 55 

nizing and co-ordinating the locomotive movements. When 
an action becomes complex, that is, demands the exercise of 
several groups of muscles in a fixed order and alternation, the 
due performance of the act must be provided for by some 
organization of the nerve centres. We have already seen that 
the medulla oblongata can support the two-stroke movement 
of the lungs; but there are still higher complexities to be 
provided for. The act of walking of a biped, for example, is 
at the very least a four-stroke movement, since there must be 
an impulse to and fro for either limb ; and if these four strokes 
did not succeed in due harmony, the animal would be at a 
stand-still. Walking on all fours is still more complicated, 
demanding at least eight motions to be harmonized. The 
operation of chewing is another case in point ; there is a com- 
plicated concurrence of movements of the jaw, the tongue, 
and the cheeks ; and if any one of these make a false step, 
some accident, such as the biting of the tongue will result. 
In man the actions of the hand and fingers are extremely 
complex. The movements connected with the maintenance of 
the erect posture are likewise very numerous, so much so that 
a long education is needed for their due performance. To as 
many of these actions as are primitive, or instinctive, the 
cerebellum would appear to be an indispensable support, and 
so doubtless it must be to the acquired actions based on them. 
The following quotation from Messrs. Todd and Bowman, will 
exhibit the experimental proofs of this function. 

' Flourens removed the cerebellum from pigeons by suc- 
cessive slices. During the removal of the superficial layers 
there appeared only a slight feebleness and want of harmony 
in the movements, without any expression of pain. On reach- 
ing the middle layers, au almost universal agitation was rnani. 
fested, without any sign of convulsion ; the animal performed 
rapid and ill-regulated movements ; it could hear and see. 
After the removal of the deepest layers, the animal lost com- 
pletely the power of standing, walking, leaping, or flying. 
The power had been injured by the previous mutilations, but 
now it was completely gone. When placed upon his back, he 
was unable to rise. He did not, however, remain quiet and 



56 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

motionless, as pigeons deprived of the cerebral hemispheres 
do ; but evinced an incessant restlessness, and an inability to 
accomplish any regular or definite movement. He could see 
the instrument raised to threaten him with a blow, and would 
make a thousand contortions to avoid it, but did not escape. 
Volition and sensation remained, — the power of executing 
movements remained ; but that of co-ordinating these move- 
ments into regular and combined actions was lost. 

'Animals deprived of the cerebellum are in a condition 
very similar to that of a drunken man, so far as relates to their 
power of locomotion. They are unable to produce that com- 
bination of action in different sets of muscles which is neces- 
sary to enable them to assume or maintain any attitudes. 
They cannot stand still for a moment, and in attempting to 
walk, their gait is unsteady, they totter from side to side, and 
their progress is interrupted by frequent falls. The fruitless 
attempts which they make to stand or walk are sufficient proof 
that a certain degree of intelligence remains, and that volun- 
tary power continues to be enjoyed/ (T. and B., 359.) 

When the cerebellum is cut away at the top, the animal 
moves backward. When one side is cut away, the animal rolls 
over to the injured side. Sometimes a vertiginous action 
ensues, as if the body were revolved on a spit. 

We have reason to suppose that dexterity and precision of 
movements, manual or other, are connected with a well deve- 
loped cerebellum. 

The phrenologists have attributed to the cerebellum the 
sexual function, with the amatory feelings corresponding there- 
to ; but the greater number of physiologists are decidedly 
opposed to this view. 

The white matter of the brain, which performs those inces- 
sant and innumerable acts of communication between the central 
masses, is thus not less important than the grey matter where 
force originates. Accordingly, we find that in the higher ani- 
mals, the white substance becomes developed in proportion to 
the energy of the mental functions. As we descend the scale, 
the white matter dwindles in a most notable way : in birds 
the grand junction of the brain, the pons Varolii, disappears as 



COURSE OF POWER IN THE BRAIN. 57 

a distinct mass ; and down to reptiles and fishes, the same 
course of diminution is seen to proceed. 

Of the Nerve Force and the course of Power in the Brain. 

22. The structure of the nervous substance, and the experi- 
ments made upon the nerves and nerve centres, establish 
beyond doubt certain peculiarities as belonging to the force 
that is exercised by the brain. This force is of a current 
nature ; that is to say, a power generated at one part of the 
structure is conveyed along an intervening substance, and dis- 
charged at some other part. The different forms of Electricity 
and Magnetism have made us familiar with this sort of action. 
In a voltaic cell, an energy is gendered and transmitted along 
a wire with inconceivable rapidity to any place where the 
conductor reaches. The telegraph wire, as already said, bears 
a strong resemblance to a nerve passing from the brain to any 
part of the body; and the grey substance of the nerve centres, 
which are highly supplied with blood, is paralleled by the 
voltaic battery where the electric power is generated by the 
corroding power of an acid. 

This portable, or current, character of the nerve force is 
what enables movements distant from one another in the body 
to be associated together under a common stimulus. An 
impression of sound, a musical note, for example, is carried to 
the brain ; this impression is seen to produce a responsive 
action and excitement extending to the voice, mouth, eyes, 
head, &c. This multiplex and various manifestation implies 
a system of connexion among the centres of action, whereby 
many strings can be touched from one point; a connexion 
due to the conducting nerves that pass and repass from centre 
to centre, and from the centres to the muscular apparatus over 
the body. Supposing the corpora quadrigemina to be a centre 
for the sense of vision, an impression passing to this centre 
propagates a movement towards many other centres, — to the 
convoluted hemispheres upwards, to the cerebellum behind, 
and to the medulla oblongata and spinal cord beneath ; and 
through these various connexions an extensive wave of effects 



58 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

may be produced, ending in a complicated chain of move- 
ments all over the framework of the body. Such a system of 
intercommunication and transmission of power is therefore an 
essential part of the bodily and mental structure. 

23. The analogy that exists between nerve power and 
electricity does not amount to identity. The nerve force is 
not either electricity or magnetism. The differences between 
the two are broad and distinct. The following is a statement 
of some of those differences. 

In the first place, in the development of voltaic electricity 
a closed circuit is indispensable. The influence generated in 
the cell cannot pass along the conducting wire until a com- 
plete circle of wire or other conducting material is made, 
bringing the influence round to the cell again. The moment 
the circuit is interrupted, the power ceases. But no such 
closed circuit can be traced in the nervous apparatus. An 
influence arising from a centre may pass out into a muscle 
and be discharged there, without any return influence that 
can at present be traced. It has been seen that in the 
experiments on the nerves, by mechanical or other irritation, 
there is no necessity for a completed circuit. Nervous power 
requires the connexion of a centre with fibrous communica- 
tions to distant parts, but does not appear to demand a perfect 
circle of nerves. Grey matter alone can do nothing ; a com- 
bination of grey with white, or of central with conducting 
power is always requisite, but a single outgoing thread 
terminating in a limb, would seem to suffice for the effect. 
We do not, however, include the kind of circle completed in 
reflex actions, which is quite different in its nature from the 
circle here discussed. 

In the second place, the conducting power of nerve fibre 
is a wasting operation, one that draws upon the vitality of the 
fibre, and causes the necessity for times of rest and a copious 
supply of nourishment. The common experience of nervous 
fatigue and exhaustion is a proof of this. We have no good 
grounds for limiting the locality of nervous exhaustion to the 
grey matter alone. The nerve fibres are richly supplied with 



SOURCE OF NERVOUS POWER. 59 

blood vessels through their whole length, although less so than 
the vesicular matter of the centres. Moreover, in experiments 
upon the irritability of nerves, it is shown that they lose this 
quality entirely after being separated from the means of 
nourishment for a certain length of time — a time not sufficient 
to produce a radical alteration in the structure of the nerve. 

If now we compare this liability to waste and exhaustion 
with the undying endurance of an electric wire, we shall be 
struck with a very great contrast. The wire is doubtless a 
more compact, resisting, and sluggish mass ; the conduction 
requires a certain energy of electric action to set it agoing, 
and in the course of a great distance becomes faint and dies 
away. The nerve, on the other hand, is stimulated by a 
slighter influence, and propagates that influence, it may be, 
with increase, by the consumption of its own material. The 
wire must be acted on at both ends, by the closure of the 
circuit, before acting as a conductor in any degree ; the nerve 
takes fire from a slight stimulus like a train of gunpowder, and 
is wasted by the current that it propagates. If this view be 
correct the influence conveyed is much more beholden to the 
conducting fibres than electricity is to the copper wire. The 
fibres are made to sustain or increase the force at the cost of 
their own substance. 

' The proofs/ say Messrs. Todd and Bowman, ' of the 
passage of an electric current through the nerve fibres during 
nervous action must be held to be altogether defective. Not 
only is experimental evidence wanting to support the electrical 
theory, but certain facts are admitted which greatly invalidate 
it.' — Vol. I. p. 233. 

24. It is nevertheless manifest that the nervous power is 
generated from the action of the nutriment supplied to the 
body, and is therefore of the class of forces having a common 
origin, and capable of being mutually transmitted, — including 
mechanical momentum, heat, electricity, magnetism, and che- 
mical decomposition. The power that animates the human 
frame and keeps alive the currents of the brain, has its origin 
in the grand primal source of reviving power, the Sun ; his 



60 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

influence exerted on vegetation builds up the structures whose 
destruction and decay within the animal system give forth 
all the energy concerned in maintaining the animal processes. 
What is called vitality is not so much a peculiar force as a 
collocation of the forces of inorganic matter for the purpose 
of keeping up a living structure. If our means of observa- 
tion and measurement were more perfect, we might render 
account of all the nutriment cousumed in any animal or 
human being ; we might calculate the entire amount of 
energy evolved in the changes that constitute this consump- 
tion, and allow one portion for animal heat, another for 
the processes of secretion, a third for the action of the heart, 
lungs, and intestines, a fourth for the muscular exertion made 
within the period, a fifth for the activity of the brain, and so 
on till we had a strict balancing of receipt and expenditure. 
The nerve force that is derived from the waste of a given 
amount of food, is capable of being transmuted into any other 
force of animal life. Poured into the muscles during violent 
conscious effort, it increases their activity ; passing to the 
alimentary canal, it aids in the force of digestion ; in moments 
of excitement the power is converted into sensible heat ; the 
same power is found capable of yielding true electrical cur- 
rents. The evidence that establishes the common basis of 
mechanical and chemical force, heat, and electricity, namely, 
their mutual convertibility and common origin, establishes the 
nerve force as a member of the same group. 

25. The current character of the nerve force leads to a 
considerable departure from the common mode of viewing the 
position of the brain as the organ of mind. We have seen 
that the cerebrum is a mixed mass of grey and white matter, 
— the matter of centres and the matter of conduction. Both 
are required in any act of the brain known to us. The 
smallest cerebral operation includes the transmission of an 
influence from one centre to another centre, from a centre to 
an extremity, or the reverse. Hence we cannot separate the 
centres from their communicating branches ; and if so, we 
cannot separate the centres from the other organs of the body 



THE BKAIN NOT A SENSOKIUM. 61 

that originate or receive nerve stimulus. The organ of mind 
is not the brain by itself; it is the brain, nerves, muscles, and 
organs of sense. When the brain is in action, there is some 
transmission of nerve power, and the organ that receives or 
that originated the power is an essential part of the mechanism. 
A brain bereft of the spinal cord and spinal nerves is dead 
though the blood continues to flow to it ; and these nerves, 
if plucked out of the limbs and other parts where they 
terminate, would probably not suffice to sustain the currents 
associated with mental life. 

It is, therefore, in the present state of our knowledge, an 
entire misconception to talk of a sensorium within the brain, 
a sanctum sanctorum, or inner chamber, where impressions 
are poured in and stored up to be reproduced in a future day. 
There is no such chamber, no such mode of reception of out- 
ward influence. A stimulus or sensation acting on the brain 
exhausts itself in the production of a number of transmitted 
currents or influences ; while the stimulus is alive, these con- 
tinue, and when these have ceased the impression is exhausted. 
The revival of the impression is the setting on of the currents 
anew ; such currents show themselves in actuating the bodily 
members, — the voice, the eyes, the features, — in productive 
action, or in mere expression and gesture. The currents may 
have all degrees of intensity, from the fury of a death struggle 
to the languor of a half-sleeping reverie, or the fitful flashes 
of a dream, but their nature is still the same. 

We must thus discard for ever the notion of the sensorium 
commune, the cerebral closet, as a central seat of mind, or 
receptacle of sensation and imagery. We may be very far 
from comprehending the full and exact character of nerve 
force, but the knowledge we have gained is sufficient to destroy 
the hypothesis that has until lately prevailed as to the material 
processes of perception. Though we have not attained a final 
understanding of this obscure and complicated machinery, we 
can at least substitute a more exact view for a less ; and such 
is the substitution now demanded of current action for the 
crude conception of a central receptacle of stored up impres- 
sions. Our present insight enables us to say with great 



62 OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM. 

probability, no currents, no mind. The transmission of in- 
fluence along the nerve fibres from place to place, seems the 
very essence of cerebral action. This transmission, moreover, 
must not be confined within the limits of the brain : not only 
could no action be kept up and no sensation received by the 
brain alone, but it is doubtful if even thought, reminiscence, 
or the emotions of the past and absent, could be sustained 
without the more distant communications between the brain 
and the rest of the body — the organs of sense and of movement. 
It is true that between the separate convolutions of the brain, 
between one hemisphere and another, between the convoluted 
hemispheres and the corpora striata, thalami optici, corpora 
quadrigemina, cerebellum, medulla oblongata, and spinal cord, 
influence might be imagined to pass and repass without flowing 
into the active extremities or to the five senses, and might 
thus constitute an isolated cerebral life ; but it is in the 
highest degree improbable that such isolation does or can exist. 
Nervous influence, rising in great part in sensation, comes at 
last to action ; short of this nothing is done, no end served. 
However feeble the currents may be, their natural course is 
towards the organs accustomed to their sway. Hence the 
reason for adopting language, as we have done throughout the 
present chapter, to imply that the brain is only a part of the 
machinery of mind ; for although a large part of all the 
circles of mental action lie within the head, other parts equally 
indispensable extend throughout the body. 



! 



BOOK I. 

MOVEMENT, SENSE, AND INSTINCT 






. 



WE now commence the subject of Mind proper, or the 
enumeration and explanation of the States and Varieties 
of Feeling, the Modes of Action, and the Powers of Intelli- 
gence, comprised in the mental nature of man. 

In the First Book, which is to comprehend the Move- 
ments, Sensations, Appetites, and Instincts, I propose to 
deal with what may be termed the inferior region of mind, 
the inferiority being marked by the absence, in a great degree, 
of Intellect and cultivation. This is the region wherein man 
may be most extensively compared with the brute creation, 
whose intelligence and education are comparatively small. 
When the powers of a superior intellect, and the example and 
acquirements of former generations are superadded to the 
primitive Sensations and Instincts, there results a higher class 
of combinations, more difficult to analyse and describe, and 
falling therefore more properly to a later stage of the ex- 
position. 

It will, however, be remarked as a novelty in the plan 
thus announced, that the Appetites and Instincts have been 
included in the same Book with the Sensations. In the 
works of former writers on Mental Science, as, for example, 
Reid, Stewart, Brown, and Mill, those portions of our nature 
have been included among the general group of Active 
Powers, including Desire, Habit, and the Will. My reasons 
for departing from the example of these eminent writers are 
the following. In the first place, the Appetites and Instincts 
are scarcely at all connected with the higher operations of 
intelligence, and therefore they do not require to be preceded 
by the exposition of the Intellect. Everything necessary to 
be said respecting them may be given as soon as the Sensa- 
tions are discussed. In the second place, I hope to make it 
appear that the illustration of the Intellectual processes will 
gain by the circumstance that Appetite and Instinct have 
been previously gone into. Thirdly, the connexion of Appetite 

F 



66 MOVEMENT, SENSE, AND INSTINCT. 

with Sensation is so close, that the one will be found to tread 
on the heels of the other. Fourthly, as regards Instinct, I 
conceive it to be proper to render an account of all that is 
Instinctive in our nature — all our untaught activities — before 
entering upon the process of acquisition as treated of under 
the Intellect. In addition to these reasons stated in advance, 
I trust to the impression produced by the effect of the arrange- 
ment itself for the complete justification of my departure from 
the plan of my predecessors. 

The arrangement of the present Book will be into four 
chapters. 

The subject of Chapter first is Action and Movement con- 
sidered as spontaneous, together with the Feelings and Impres- 
sions resulting from muscular activity. 

Chapter second treats of the Senses and Sensations. 

Chapter third treats of the Appetites. 

Chapter fourth includes the Instincts, or the untaught 
movements, and the primitive rudiments of Emotion and 
Volition. This subject is brought in at that stage in order to 
complete the plan of the present Book, which professes to 
exhaust all the primitive germs, whether of Action or Emotion, 
belonging to our nature, before proceeding to the considera- 
tion of intelligence and acquisition. In a complete system of 
mind the Intellect would in this view be placed midway 
between the instinctive, and the cultivated, emotions and ac- 
tivities, being itself the instrument for converting the one class 
into the other. 






CHAPTER I. 

OF SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY AND THE FEELINGS 
OF MOVEMENT. 

i- ^PHE feelings connected with the movements of the 
J- body, or the action of the muscles, have come to be 
recognised as a distinct class, differing materially from the 
sensations of the five senses. They have been regarded by 
some metaphysicians as proceeding from a sense apart, a sixth, 
or muscular sense, and have accordingly been enrolled under 
the general head of sensations. That they are to be dealt 
with as a class by themselves, as much so as sounds or sights, 
the feelings of affection, or the emotion of the ludicrous, is 
now pretty well admitted on all hands. 

With regard, however, to the position of this class of 
feelings in the plan or arrangement of our subject, there is 
still room for differences of opinion. In my judgment they 
ought not to be classed with the Sensations of the five Senses, 
and I believe further that the consideration of them should 
precede the exposition of the Senses. The grounds of this 
belief are such as the following : — namely, that movement 
precedes sensation, and is at the outset independent of any 
stimulus from without ; and that action is a more intimate 
and inseparable property of our constitution than any of our 
sensations, and in fact enters as a component part into every one 
of the senses, giving them the character of compounds while 
itself is a simple and elementary property. These assertions 
require to be proved in detail, but before doing so, it is 
advisable to notice briefly the mechanism or anatomy of 
movement in the animal frame. 

F 2 



68 



THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM. 



OF THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM. 

2. Muscular Tissue. — ' The muscular tissue is that by 
means of which the active movements of the body are pro- 
duced. It consists of fine fibres, which are for the most part 
collected into distinct organs, called muscles, and in this form it 
is familiarly known as the flesh of animals ; these fibres are also 
disposed round the sides of cavities and between the coats of 
hollow viscera, forming strata of greater or less thickness. The 
muscular fibres are endowed with contractility — a remarkable 
and characteristic property, by virtue of which they shrink or 
contract more or less rapidly under the influence of certain 
causes which are capable of exciting or calling into play the 
property in question, and which are therefore named stimuli. 
A large class of muscles, comprehending those of locomotion, 
respiration, expression, and some others, are excited by the 
stimulus of the will, or volition, acting on them through the 
nerves ; these are therefore named ' voluntary muscles/ 
although some of them habitually, and all occasionally, act 
also in obedience to other stimuli. There are other muscles 
or muscular fibres which are entirely withdrawn from the 
control of the will, such as those of the heart and intestinal 
canal, and these are accordingly named ' involuntary/ These 
two classes of muscles differ not only in the mode in which 
they are excited to act, but also to a certain extent in their 
anatomical characters/ — Sharpey ; Quain's Anatomy, 
p. clxiii. 

Structure of Voluntary Muscles. — ' The voluntary mus- 
cular fibres are for the most part gathered together into 
distinct masses, or muscles of various sizes and shapes, but 
most generally of an oblong form, and furnished with tendons 
at either extremity, by which they are fixed to the bones. 
The two attached extremities of a muscle are named, in 
anatomical descriptions, its origin and insertion, — the former 
term being usually applied to the attachment which is con- 
sidered to be most fixed, although the rule cannot always be 
applied strictly. The fleshy part is named the belly. 






d 



STRUCTURE OF MUSCLE. 6U 

' The muscular fibres are collected into packets or bundles 
of greater or less thickness, named fasciculi, or lacerti, and the 
fibres themselves consist of much finer threads visible by the 
aid of the microscope, which are termed muscular filaments, 
or fibrillas. 

' The fibres, although they differ somewhat in size indi- 
vidually, have the same average diameter in all the voluntary 
muscles, namely, about ? i 7 of an inch ; and this holds good 
whether the muscles be coarse or fine in their obvious texture. 
According to Mr. Bowman their average size is somewhat 
greater in the male than in the female, being in the former 
3-l-j, and in the latter ^i-j, or more than a fourth smaller/ — lb. 

'As to the structure of fibres, it has been ascertained that 
each is made up of a larger number of extremely fine filaments 
or fibrils, inclosed in a tubular sheath.' 'When a fibril com- 
pletely insulated is highly magnified, it is seen to consist of a 
single row of minute particles, connected together like a string 
of beads.' ' The length of the elementary particles is esti- 
mated by Mr. Bowman at y 7 Vo 0I " an inch, while their trans- 
verse diameter is less, often by one-half, — at least, in specimens 
which have not been altered by contraction, he finds that their 
size is remarkably uniform in mammalia, birds, reptiles, fishes, 
and insects.' — lb. 

Nerves of Voluntary Muscles. — ' The nerves of a voluntary 
muscle are of considerable size. Their branches pass between 
the fasciculi, and in their progress repeatedly unite with each 
other in form of a plexus, the finer branches of which may 
be seen running between the smallest order of fasciculi, often 
in company with blood vessels ; at last the nervous plexus is 
reduced into minute bundles consisting of two or three 
primitive tubules each, some of them separating into single 
tubules. By means of the microscope these fine nervous 
bundles and single tubules may be observed to pass between 
the muscular fibres, and after a longer or shorter course, to 
return to the plexus. They cross the direction of the muscular 
fibres directly or obliquely, forming wide arches ; and on their 
return they either rejoin the larger nervous bundles from 
which they set out, or enter other divisions of the plexus. The 



70 THE MUSCULAR SYSTEM. 

nervous filaments, therefore, do not come to an end in the 
muscle, but form loops or strings among its fibres/ — 76. clxxii. 

I refrain from transcribing the description given of the 
in voluntary muscles, — those of the heart, intestines, bronchial 
tubes, iris, middle coat of the arteries, &c. — as being less 
important for the object of the present work. It will, how- 
ever, be interesting to hear what the same authority has said 
on the Sensibility of muscle, as well as on the contractility, or 
source of its power as a mechanical prime mover. 

3. Sensibility. — ' This property is manifested by the pain 
which is felt when a muscle is cut, lacerated, or otherwise 
violently injured, or when it is seized with spasm. Here, as 
in other instances, the sensibility, properly speaking, belongs 
to the nerves which are distributed through the tissue, and 
accordingly, when the nerves going to a muscle are cut, it 
forthwith becomes insensible. It is by means of this property, 
which is sometimes called the 'muscular sense/ that we 
become conscious of the existing state of the muscles which 
are subject to the will, or rather of the condition of the limbs 
and other parts which are moved through means of the 
voluntary muscles, and we are thereby guided in directing our 
voluntary movements towards the end in view. Accordingly, 
when the muscular sense is lost, while the power of motion 
remains, — a case which, though rare, sometimes occurs, — 
the person cannot direct the movements of the affected limbs 
without the guidance of the eye.' — p. clxxvii. 

On this passage I would remark that two very different 
modes of muscular sensibility are here indicated, while a third 
mode distinct from both is omitted. In my view the feelings 
arising from wounds, lacerations, injuries, and spasms make 
one class; the feelings of pleasure, and sometimes of pain, 
arising from movement, exercise, and resistance are a second 
class; and the conscious states that act as guides to the 
voluntary movements constitute a third class. Between the 
first and third, those given above, as almost the same, there is 
a very wide distinction, not to say a strong contrast ; while 
the pleasures of exercise and activity which have their seat in 
the muscles, the class overlooked in the foregoing quotation, 



MUSCULAR STIMULI. 71 

are considerably different from either. The detailed illustra- 
tion of these various kinds of sensibility will be given before 
concluding the present chapter. 

AVith regard to the other property of muscle, I shall 
likewise quote from the same source. 

4. Irritability or Contractility. — ' In order to cause con- 
traction, the muscle must be excited by a stimulus. The 
stimulus may be applied immediately to the muscular tissue, 
as when the fibres are irritated by a sharp point ; or it may 
be applied to the nerve or nerves which belong to the muscle ; 
in the former case, the stimulus is said to be " immediate/' 
in the latter " remote." The nerve does not contract, but it 
has the property when stimulated, of exciting contractions 
in the muscular fibres to which it is distributed, and this 
property, named the " vis nervosa" (true nervous force), is dis- 
tinguished from contractility, which is confined to the muscle. 
Again, a stimulus may be either directly applied to the nerve 
of the muscle, as when that nerve is itself mechanically 
irritated or galvanized; or it may be first made to act on 
certain other nerves, by which its influence is, so to speak, 
conducted in the first instance to the brain or spinal cord (or 
perhaps even to some subordinate nervous centre) and thence 
transferred or reflected to the muscular nerve. 

' The stimuli to which muscles are obedient are of various 
kinds; those best ascertained are the following, viz. — 1. Me- 
chanical irritation of almost any sort, under which head is 
to be included sudden extension of the muscular fibres. 
2. Chemical stimuli, as by the application of salt or acrid sub- 
stances. 3. Electrical ; usually by means of a galvanic cur- 
rent made to pass through the muscular fibres, or along a 
certain length, however short, of the nerve ; the effect taking 
place on closing or on breaking the circuit. 4. Sudden heat 
or cold. These four may be classed together, as physical 
stimuli. Next, mental stimuli, viz. — 1. The operation of 
the will, or volition. 2. Emotions, and some other involuntary 
states of the mind. Lastly, there still remain exciting causes 
of muscular motions in the economy, which, although they 
may probably turn out to be physical, are as yet of doubtful 



72 THE MUSCULAE SYSTEM. 

nature, and these, until better known, may perhaps without 
impropriety be called organic stimuli ; to this head may be 
also referred, at least provisionally, some of the stimuli which 
excite ^convulsions and other involuntary motions which occur 
in disease.' — p. clxxvii. 

Of the stimuli thus enumerated, the most interesting to 
us are the mental stimuli. Inverting the order, we should 
say, first, that it is a property of the emotions to excite the 
muscles into action, a proposition which will be maintained 
in a very extended form throughout this work; and, secondly, 
that there is a class of actions distinct from the immediate 
promptings of emotion, and yet related to emotion ; these are 
the actions of the will, or volition, which I consider to be 
nothing else than action stimulated, and guided, by feeling. 
There is one other property of muscle, which has been alluded 
to in our previous chapter, but from the importance to be 
attached to it in the discussion that is to follow, I quote a 
paragraph referring to it. The title is — 

5. Tonicity, or Tonic Contraction. — 'Although we say 
that contraction of a muscle is succeeded by relaxation, it 
must not be supposed that, during the intervals of repose, the 
muscle is inert and flaccid. On the contrary, it is still in a state 
of tension, and has still a certain tendency to approximate its 
points of attachment, although this tendency is counter- 
balanced by antagonist muscles, which are in the same con- 
dition, and the limb or other moveable part is thus main- 
tained at rest. This condition of muscle is named " tonicity/' 
or the " tonic state." It is no doubt a species of contraction, 
as well as the more conspicuous and powerful action with 
which it alternates; but it is employed merely to maintain 
equilibrium, not to cause motion, and it is not temporary but 
enduring, — continuing during sleep, when volition is in abey- 
ance, and occasioning no fatigue. It appears to be excited 
through the medium of the nerves, though independently of 
the will, for when the nerves are cut it ceases, and then the 
muscles nearly become flaccid : the stimulus which acts on the 
nerv es is not known.' — p. clxxxii. 

We have already remarked, in speaking of the functions of 



PEOOFS OF SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY. 73 

the spinal cord, considered as a centre, that this tonicity of the 
Lerves must be looked on as one of those functions; for the 
moment the spinal cord is destroyed the limbs of an animal 
become entire]y flaccid. We also remarked, that this is an 
instance to prove that a muscular stimulus may originate in a 
centre and keep flowing out from that centre, without reference 
to any impressions derived from without, although the exist- 
ence of such impressions, or the presence of emotion of any 
kind, determines a special flow of stimulus from the different 
centres or grey deposits of the brain and spinal cord. The 
use to be made of this observation will jDresently appear. 

PROOFS OF SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY. 

6. We have now to consider the evidence that there is for 
the existence of a class of movements and actions, anterior 
to, and independent of, the sensations of the senses. This 
question, brought on here to settle a point of precedence or 
arrangement, has a far wider import, and will reappear on 
various occasions in the course of our subsequent exposition. 

The proofs principally to be relied on are the following : — 

(i.) The already mentioned fact of the tonicity of muscles. 
This fact I regard as proving the existence of a central 
stimulus in the nervous system, or that the centres possess an 
initiative in the phenomenon of muscular movement. It is 
true that the tonicity does not amount to actual movement, 
but the tension implied in it is only a lower degree of the 
same thing: and what one centre does in a low degree 
another may do in a higher; the peculiar mode of operation 
is established as a fact of the nervous mechanism. 

(2.) The permanent closure of certain of the muscles — 
those named sphincters — is an effect of the same nature as the 
tonicity, but displaying a more energetic stimulus still — a 
stimulus that we can refer only to the spontaneous influence 
of some one of the centres. No impression from without, or 
from within the body, can be pointed out as originating this 
contraction. Neither could the closure be maintained by the 
muscle's own contractility, which, as before remarked, may 



74 SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY. 

be allowed to count as something, inasmuch as the destruc- 
tion or paralysis of certain of the centres leads to the total 
relaxation of those muscles. 

(3.) It is not altogether irrelevant to cite the activity 
maintained by involuntary muscles as showing the existence 
of a mode of power originating with the nerve centres. 
Nervous influence is required for maintaining the breathing 
action, the circulation of the blood, the movement of the 
food along the alimentary canal, &c. ; but this nervous action 
must evidently flow from the centres of its own accord. Even 
granting that when once commenced, the impression arising 
from one movement, is sufficient to stimulate the one that 
succeeds, which may be the case to some extent, as when the 
completed movement of expiration of the lungs initiates the 
succeeding inspiration, the difficulty would still present itself, 
How did the action commence at first? By what influence do 
we draw our first breath,* or set on the first stroke of the 
heart? If these activities cannot be kept up without the 
foreign assistance of nerve centres, they could not be com- 
menced without such assistance, and in that case the nervous 
influence must precede, for we cannot suppose that a col- 
lapsed organ can originate the central stimulus that first sets 
it agoing. 

Thus the notion of an initiative existing in the nerve 
centres is borne out not only by the tonicity, but by the more 
energetic action of the sphincters, and the analogy of the 
involuntary muscles. Seeing that the spinal cord and medulla 
oblongata are found capable of originating muscular con- 
tractions, we are entitled to suppose that the far larger masses 
that make up the brain may be the sources of a much more 
abundant and conspicuous activity than these examples afford. 
If the encephalic or mental centres are the source of movements 
by their own energy, without the aid of sensations and im- 
pressions from without, the phenomenon is likely to show 



* The power that commences respiration in the new-horn infant is still 
undecided. I do not wish to foreclose this question, or to deny that external 
stimulants may come into play to produce the effect. 



WAKENING FROM SLEEP. ~0 

itself in them on a much larger scale. The proofs that follow 
are intended to be put in evidence of the existence of such 
movements. 

(4.) In wakening from sleep movement precedes sensation. 
If light were essential to the movements concerned in vision, 
it would be impossible to open the eyes. The act of wakening 
from sleep can hardly be considered in any other view, than 
as the reviving of the activity by a rush of nervous power to 
the muscles, followed by the exposure of the senses to 
the influences of the outer world. I know of no circum- 
stance that would go to show that sensation is the antecedent 
fact, in the case when the individual awakes of his own 
accord. The first symptom of awakening that presents itself 
is a general commotion of the frame, a number of spon- 
taneous movements, — the stretching of the limbs, the opening 
of the eyes, the expansion of the features, — to all which 
succeeds the revival of the sensibility to outward things. 
Mysterious as the nature of sleep is in the present state of our 
knowledge, we are not precluded from remarking so notable 
a circumstance, as the priority of action to sensibility, at the 
moment of wakening. 

But if this be a fact, we seem to prove, beyond a doubt, 
that the renewed action must originate with the nerve centres 
themselves. The first gestures must be stimulated from 
within, by a power lodged in the grey masses of the brain; 
afterwards they are linked with the gestures and movements 
suggested by sense and revived by intelligence and will. The 
higher degree of permanent tension in the waking muscles 
must be owing in part to the increased central force of the 
waking states, and in part to the stimulus of sensation. But 
in all cases, the share due to the centres must be considerable, 
although rendered difficult to estimate when mixed up with 
sensational stimulus. Thus the force that keeps the eye open 
throughout the day, must in some measure be due to the 
spontaneous energy that opened it at the waking moment, 
for that force does not necessarily cease when the other force, 
the stimulus of light, commences. 

We are at liberty to suppose that the nourished condition 



76 SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY. 

of the nerve centres, consequent on the night's repose, is the 
cause of that burst of spontaneous exertion which marks the 
moment of awakening. The antecedent of the activity in 
this case is, therefore, more physical than mental; and this 
must be the case with spontaneous energy in general. When 
linked with sensation and other mental conditions, the cha- 
racter of the activity is modified so as to render the spon- 
taneity much less discernible. 

(5.) The next proof is derived from the early movements 
of infancy. These I look upon as in great part due to the 
spontaneous action of the centres. The mobility displayed in 
the first stage of infant existence is known to be very great ; 
and it continues to be shown in an exuberant degree all 
through childhood and early youth. This mobility can be 
attributed only to three causes. It may arise from the 
stimulus of sensation, that is, from the sights, sounds, contacts, 
temperature, &c, of outward things; in which case we should 
have a reflected or stimulated activity. It may, in the second 
place, be owing to emotion generated within the body, or 
states of consciousness growing out of the brain and the 
bodily processes generally, as when internal pains give rise 
to paroxysms, or high health to the lively movements of mere 
animal spirits. The effect may, lastly, be due to the spon- 
taneous discharge of central vigour over all the active organs 
of the body, limbs, trunk, features, voice, &c. 

The two first named influences, external sensation and 
inward emotion, are undoubted causes of active gesticulation 
and movement. But the question is, Do they explain the 
whole activity of early infancy and childhood ? I think not, 
and on evidence such as the following. We can easily observe 
when any one is under the influence of vivid sensation ; we 
can tell whether a child is affected by sights or sounds, or 
tastes, by seeing whether the attention is actually engaged 
upon such objects. And if the observation is carefully made, 
I believe it will be found, that although the gesticulations of 
infants are frequently excited by surrounding objects, there 
are times when such influence is very little felt, and when 
nevertheless the mobility of the frame is strongly manifested. 



EXUBERANT ACTIVITY OF THE YOUNG. 77 

With regard to inward feelings, or emotions, the proof is not 
so easy ; but here, too, there is a certain character belonging to 
emotional movements that serves to discriminate them when 
they occur. The movements, gestures, and cries of internal 
pain are well marked, and cannot be ascribed to the spon- 
taneous energy of the centres ; and highly pleasurable feeling 
is distinguished by the equally characteristic flow of smiles 
and extatic utterance. If there be times of active gesticu- 
lation and exercise that show no connexion with the sights 
and sounds, or other influence of the outer world, and that 
have no peculiar emotional character of the pleasurable or 
painful kind, we can ascribe them to nothing but the mere 
abundance and exuberance of self-acting muscular and 
cerebral energy, which will rise and fall with the vigour and 
nourishment of the general system. 

The activity of young animals in general, and of animals, 
remarkable for their active endowments (as the insect tribe), 
may be cited as strongly favouring the hypothesis of spon- 
taneity. When the kitten plays w r ith a worsted ball, we 
always attribute the overflowing fulness of moving energy to 
the creature's own inward stimulus, to which the ball merely 
serves for a pretext. So an active young hound refreshed by 
, sleep or rested by confinement pants for being let loose, not 
because of anything that attracts his view or kindles up his 
ear, but because a rush of activity courses through his mem- 
bers, rendering him uneasy till the confined energy has found 
vent in a chase or a run. We are at no loss to distinguish 
this kind of activity from that awakened by sensation or 
emotion, and the distinction is accordingly recognised in the 
modes of interpreting the movements and feelings of animals. 
When a rider speaks of his horse as ' fresh/ he implies that 
the natural activity is undischarged, and pressing for vent ; 
the excitement caused by mixing in a chase or in a battle, is 
a totally different thing from the spontaneous vehemence of a 
full-fed and underworked animal. 

It is customary in like manner to attribute much of the 
activity of early human life, neither to sensation nor to emo- 
tion, but to ' freshness/ or the current of undischarged activity. 



78 SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY. 

There are moments when high health, natural vigour, and 
spontaneous outpouring, are the only obvious antecedents of 
ebullient activity. The very necessity of bodily exercise felt 
by every one, and most of all by the young, is a proof of the 
existence of a fund of energy that comes round with the day 
and presses to be discharged. Doubtless it may be said that 
this necessity may proceed from a state of the muscles, and 
not from the centres, that an uneasy craving rises periodically 
in the muscular tissue and is transmitted as a stimulus to the 
centres, awakening a nervous current of activity in return. 
Even if this were true, it would not materially alter the 
case we are labouring to establish, namely a tendency in the 
moving system to go into action without any antecedent sen- 
sation from without or emotion from within, or without any 
stimulus extraneous to the moving apparatus itself. But we do 
not see any ground for excluding the agency of the centres in 
the commencing stimulus of periodical active exercise. The 
same central energy that keeps up the muscular tonicity must 
be allowed to share in the self-originating muscular activity. 
If so the demand for exercise that comes round upon every 
actively constituted nature is a strong confirmation of the 
view we are now engaged in maintaining. 

Coupling together, therefore, the initial movements of 
infancy, the mobility of early years generally, the observations 
on young and active members of the brute creation, and the 
craving for exercise universally manifested, we have a strong 
body of evidence in favour of the doctrine of spontaneous 
action. 

(6.) The mode of activity shown under states of excitement 
is in perfect consistency with the present doctrine. We find 
that excitement causes an unusual degree of activity, in fact 
an almost uncontrollable discharge of energy and power, as if 
the nervous centres were rendered incontinent and profuse by 
some temporary alteration in their nature. Whatever may be 
the way that the excited condition has been worked up — and 
there are very many ways — the character of it can be most 
accurately expressed by saying that there is an extraordinary 
discharge of active force from the brain towards the bodily 



THE ACTIVE TEMPERAMENT. 79 

members. Every sensible impression made during this state 
causes a more than average effect, and yet the current of energy 
does not wait for outward stimuli. Independently altogether 
of what a man sees, or hears, or thinks, he is disposed to be 
active to an uncommon degree ; these influences of sense and 
thought seem merely to direct or point the course of the 
current, they do not create it. A stream of power is flowing 
from the centres to the extremities ; the movements of the 
individual are vehement, and hurried. Outward circumstances 
may control or modify them ; inward self-sustaining power 
alone seems to prompt them. Excitement in fact is but an 
exalted degree of spontaneity, making a weak man for the 
moment equal to a stronger, and simulating the effects of 
natural vigour and freshness by an exhausting effort of the 
nervous centres. We shall afterwards see that, in reality, the 
stimulants supplied through the senses may not improperly be 
looked upon as causing or preparing a state of excitement 
during which the spontaneity of the centres is momentarily 
heightened to a more copious discharge. 

(7.) As a farther confirmation, it may be remarked that 
sensibility and activity do not as a general rule rise and fall 
together ; on the contrary, they often stand in an inverse pro- 
portion to each other. In comparing different characters, or 
the different states of the same individual, we may test the 
truth of this observation. The strong, restless, active tempera- 
ment is not always marked as the most sensitive and emotional, 
but is very frequently seen to be the least affected by these 
influences. The activity that seems to sustain itself, costing 
the individual almost no effort, being his delight rather than 
his drudgery, and very little altered by the presence or the 
absence of stimulus or ends, is manifestly a constitutional self- 
prompting force ; and such activity may be seen in innumer- 
able instances in the living world. This feature makes one of 
the fundamental distinctions of character, both in individuals 
and in races ; being seen in the restless adventurer, the in- 
defatigable traveller, the devotee of business, the incessant 
meddler in affairs ; in the man that hates repose and despises 
passive enjoyments. It is the pushing energy of Philip of 



80 SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY. 

Macedon and William the Conqueror. On the other hand, 
sensitive and emotional natures, which are to be found abun- 
dantly among men, and still more abundantly among women, 
are not active in a corresponding degree, while the kind of 
activity actually displayed is plainly seen to result more from 
some stimulus or object than from an innate exuberance of 
action. The activity prompted by ends, by something to be 
gained or avoided, is easily distinguished from the other by its 
being closely adapted to those ends, and by its ceasing when 
they have been accomplished. He that labours merely on the 
stimulus of reward, rests when he has acquired a competency, 
and is never confounded with the man whose life consists in 
giving vent to a naturally active temperament, or a super- 
abundance of muscular and central energy. 

Although a less conclusive, because more complicated, con- 
sideration than those advanced in the previously cited proofs, 
I do not hesitate to bring this last consideration under the 
notice of observant readers as accurately chiming in with the 
main stream of the general argument on this subject. If 
action were strictly dependent on sensation and emotion, it 
would be found to be always proportional to those stimuli ; 
but such proportion palpably and notoriously fails to hold 
good. 

(8.) My last argument is one that can only be indicated 
here, the full illustration belongs to a more advanced stage of 
the exposition. In the proper place, I hope to be able to show 
that without this spontaneity of our actions, the growth of 
volition, or of activity guided to ends, would be impracticable. 

Regions of Spontaneous Activity. 

7. The natural tendency to act of their own accord belongs 
to all the muscles that are reckoned voluntary, and originates 
an extensive variety of movements. The muscles for the most 
part act in groups, being associated together by the organiza- 
tion of the nervous centres for the performance of actions 
requiring the concurrence of several of them. It will be 
convenient to refer at the present stage to the principal 



SPONTANEITY OF THE LOCOMOTIVE MEMBERS. 81 

groupings thus formed, in order to pass in review the different 
kinds of actions that may arise independently of outward or 
foreign stimulation. 

The locomotive apparatus is perhaps the most conspicuous 
of the voluntary groups. This involves, (taking vertebrate 
animals in general), the limbs or the anterior and posterior 
extremities with their numerous muscles, and the trunk of the 
body, which in all animals chimes in more or less with the 
movements of the extremities. In the outbursts of spontaneous 
action, locomotive effort, (walking, running, flying, swimming, 
&c.) is one of the foremost tendencies ; having the. advantage 
of occupying a large portion of the muscular system, and 
thus giving vent to a copious stream of accumulated power. 
No observant person can have missed noticing hundreds of 
instances where locomotion resulted from purely spontaneous 
effort. In the human subject, the locomotive members are 
long in being adapted to their proper use, and in the mean- 
time they expend their activity in the dancing gestures and 
kicking movements manifested by the infant in the arms of 
the nurse. 

The locomotive action agitates the whole length of the 
spine up to the articulations of the neck and head. The 
members concerned, however, have many movements besides, 
especially in man, and these are found to arise no less 
readily. Thus the movements of the arms are extremely 
various, and all of them may burst out in the spontaneous 
way. The grasp of the hand is the result of an extensive 
muscular endowment, and at an early stage manifests itself in 
the round of the innate and chance movements. 

The erections and bendings of the body are outlets for 
spontaneous activity, more especially erection, which implies the 
greatest effort. When superfluous power cannot run into the 
more abundant opening of locomotive movement, it expends 
itself in stretching and erecting the body and limbs, to the ex- 
treme point of tension. This is accompanied by greater vigour 
of inspiration of the breath, and consequent increase of expira- 
tion. The erection extends to the carriage of the head and 
the distension of the eyes, mouth, and features. 

G 



82 SPONTANEOUS ACTIVITY. 

The vocal organs are a distinct and notable group of the 
active members. The utterance of the voice is unequivocally 
owing on many occasions to mere profusion of central energy ? 
although more liable than almost any other mode of action to 
be stimulated from without. In man the flow of words and 
song, in animals the outbursts of barking, braying, howling, 
are often manifestly owing to no other cause than the ' fresh' 
condition of the vocal organs. 

Among the varied movements of the human face, including 
the internal movements of the tongue and jaw, we can single 
out two or three distinct groupings. The eyes have their 
independent centre of energy, whence results a spontaneously 
sustained gaze upon the outer world. When no object spe- 
cially arrests the attention, the activity of the visual movements 
must be considered as mainly due to central power. In the 
blind this is necessarily the sole influence at work. In a 
person deprived of the sight of one eye, we find that eye still 
kept open, but not so wide as the other. The mouth is also 
subject to various movements which may often be the result 
of mere internal power, as is seen in the contortions indulged 
in after a period of immobility and restraint. The jaws find 
their use in masticating the food, but failing this, they may 
put forth their force in biting things put into the mouth, as 
we see in children not yet arrived at the age of chewing. The 
tongue is an organ of great natural activity, being endowed 
with many muscles, and having a wide scoj)e of action. In 
the spontaneous action of the voice, which is at first an in- 
articulate howl, the play of the tongue, commencing of its own 
accord, gives the articulate character to utterance, and lays a 
foundation for the acquirement of speech. 

Among the special aptitudes manifested among the lower 
animals we find very well-marked examples of the spontaneity 
of action. The destructive weapons belonging to so many 
tribes are frequently brought into play without any stimulus 
or provocation, and when no other reason can be rendered 
than the necessity for discharging an accumulation of inward 
energy. As the battery of the Torpedo becomes charged by 
the mere course of nutrition, and requires to be periodically 



SPONTANEITY OF SPECIAL ACTIVITIES. S3 

relieved by being poured upon some object or other, so we may 
suppose that the jaws of the tiger, the fangs of the serpent, the 
spinning apparatus of the spider, require at intervals to have 
some objects to spend themselves upon. It is said that the 
constructiveness of the bee and the beaver incontinently 
manifests itself even when there is no end to be gained ; a 
circumstance not at all singular if we admit the spontaneous 
nature of many of the active endowments of men and 
animals. 

The spontaneous activity is always observed to rise and fall 
with the vigour and state of nutrition of the general system, 
being abundant in states of high health, and deficient during 
sickness, hunger, and fatigue. Energetic movements, moreover, 
arise under the influence of drugs and stimulants acting on 
the nerves and nerve centres ; also from fever and other disease. 
Convulsions, spasms, and unnatural excitement, are diseased 
forms of the spontaneous discharge of the active energy of the 
nerve centres. 

OF THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

8. We are now brought to the express consideration 
of the first class of phenomena proper and peculiar to mind, 
namely, States of Feeling, Consciousness, or Emotion ; these 
we have from the outset recognised as one of the three distinct 
manifestations of our mental nature. To give a systematic 
and precise account of the states of human consciousness, a 
Natural History of the feelings, is one of the professed objects 
of the science of mind. The attempt is scarcely paralleled by 
any mode of procedure occurring in the sciences that embrace 
the outer world ; the only instructive analogy that I know of, 
is found in some of the branches of Natural History proper, as 
for example, Mineralogy, where a great effort of scientific 
classification is needed to reduce to order the vast variety of 
mineral substances. 

I reckon it inexpedient at this early stage to enter upon a 
justification of the method and order of description herein 
adopted for the systematic delineation of the conscious states. 
When the method has been fully exemplified, the character 

g2 



84 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

and sufficiency of it will be appreciated without much dif- 
ficulty.* Moreover, I mean to defer the metaphysical con- 
sideration of Consciousness itself, with the problems suspended 
therein, to a future period. Most of the individual states and 
varieties of consciousness can be sufficiently well determined 
and described without raising controversies as to the definition 
of consciousness in the abstract ; while the handling of an 
abstraction so intensely debated as this has been, demands 
some previous preparation. 

9. Having seen fit to commence the present Book with 
Movements and Muscular States, the Feelings that come first 
to be enumerated, are those connected with Muscularity and 
Movement. We have already recognised three distinct classes 
of these, namely : — 

(1.) Feelings connected with the organic condition of the 
muscles ; as those arising from hurts, wounds, diseases, fatigue, 
rest, nutriment. These affections the muscles have in common 
with the other tissues of the body ; and the feelings that they 



* It may facilitate the comprehension of the method, if I offer a few 
explanatory remarks as to the scope of it. The reader is sufficiently 
acquainted with the threefold partition of mind into Emotion, Volition, 
and Intellect. If this partition be complete and exhaustive, every mental 
fact and phenomenon whatsoever falls under one or other of these heads ; 
nothing mental can he stated that is not either a feeling, a volition, or a 
thought. It must, nevertheless, he observed, that mental states need not 
belong to one of these classes exclusively. A feeling may have a certain 
volitional aspect, at the same time that it possesses all the characters of a 
true emotion : thus the mental state caused by intense cold, is of the nature 
of a feeling in the proper acceptation of the term; we recognise it as a mode 
of consciousness of the painful kind, but inasmuch as it stimulates us to 
perform actions for abating or freeing ourselves from the pain, there 
attaches to it a volitional character as well. In like manner every state 
that can be reproduced afterwards as a recollection, or retained as an idea, 
has by that fact a certain intellectual character. 

Now, in describing states that come properly under the general head of 
emotion or feeling, we are called upon to bring forward in the first instance 
the peculiarities, or descriptive marks, that characterize them as feelings. 
This done, we may carry on the delineation by adverting to their influence 
on action, or volition ; and, lastly, we may specify anything that is distinctive 
in the hold that they take of the intellect. It is clear that if a Natural 
History of the human feelings is at all possible, we must endeavour to attain 
an orderly style of procedure, such as Naturalists in other departments 
have had recourse to. If the fundamental divisions of mind have any 
validity in them, they ought to serve as the basis of a proper descriptive 
method ; in fact the description should accord with them. 



ORGANIC MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 85 

give birth to, have nearly the same general character every- 
where. 

(2.) Feelings connected with muscular action, including all 
the pleasures and pains of exercise. These are the emotions 
most peculiar to the muscular system. 

(3.) The Feelings that indicate the various modes of tension 
of the moving organs. According as a muscle is tense or 
relaxed, according as much or little energy is thrown into it, 
and according to the quickness or slowness of the contraction, 
we are differently affected, and this difference of sensibility 
enables us to judge of the positions of our active members and 
of many important relations of external things. These are 
the feelings of muscle that enter most directly into our intel- 
ligence ; they have little of the character of mere emotion, 
and a very large reference to Thought. 

All through the present chapter, and through the following 
chapter, on Sensations, we shall require to keep in view this 
distinction between feelings that yield a. large measure of the 
distinctive character of feeling or emotion, and others whose 
emotional character is feeble, and whose function it is to 
supply the materials of the intelligence. In the eye, for ex- 
ample, the effect of a blaze of sunshine is of a very different 
nature from the sight of a watch. The one serves for the pur- 
pose of immediate enjoyment or emotion, the other is nothing 
in itself and derives its value from intellectual applications 
and the rational guidance of our life. The contrast between 
music and speech expresses the same distinction among effects 
on the ear. 

I. Of Organic Muscular Feelings. 

10. In a quotation already given from Dr. Sharpey, it is 
remarked that muscular sensibility ' is manifested by the pain 
which is felt when a muscle is cut, lacerated, or otherwise 
violently injured, or when it is seized with spasm/ These 
forms of pain are so many states of consciousness, having their 
seat or origin in the muscular tissue ; the integrity of the 
nerves and nerve centres being likewise essential to this, as to 
every other kind of sensibility. 



86 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

When we come to describe the states of feeling arising 
through the Senses, named Sensations, it will be proper to 
assign in each case the external agent that causes the Sensa- 
tion (light, sound, &c.) ; to follow this up with an account of 
the action or change effected on the sensitive surface, (as the 
skin, the tongue, &c.) ; and then to proceed with a delineation 
of the feeling itself, according to the forms made use of for 
this purpose. In the case of the muscular sensibilities, how- 
ever, neither the exciting cause, nor the changes produced on 
the tissue, constitute in the generality of cases a part of the 
delineation. There is no external agent to act on the mus- 
cular tissue, during bodily exercise, in the way that light acts 
on the eye, or hard surfaces on the skin. 

But with reference to the first class in Dr. Sharpey's 
enumeration, 'cuts, lacerations, and violent injuries/ we 
discern both an external agent and an assignable change in 
the substance of the muscle. There is in those circumstances 
a sudden break in the continuity of the fibre, which is an 
effect productive of pains in almost any tissue of the body. 
This is manifestly one of the effects calculated to give an 
intense shock to the nerves, originating a most energetic and 
pungent stimulus, which is transmitted to the centres, and 
there wakens up both consciousness and activity in very 
violent forms. 

The character of the feeling or conscious state thus pro- 
duced is clear and unmistakeable.* Such feelings are described 



* The peculiarities properly belonging to Emotion or Feeling are 
attempted to be exhibited as the first item of our systematic delineation. 
The first of these is the nature of the conscious state as pleasure or pain, 
and the degree and mode of the one or the other. Likewise, anything that 
can be laid hold of as marking agreement or disagreement with other feelings, 
looked at in their passive aspect, or as pure emotion, is seized upon to aid 
in the description. The more extensively we can compare any one state 
with others, the better able shall we be to give an exact and characteristic 
account of it. 

The nature of the inward consciousness being thus described, the out- 
ward manifestations, or the Expression, are a proper subject of notice, in 
so far as they present any distinctive peculiarities. The expression I look 
upon as part and parcel of the feeling. I believe it to be a general law of 
mind, which I shall endeavour to prove on another occasion, that along 
with the fact of inward feeling or consciousness, there is a diiiusive action, 



ACUTE PAINS. 87 

by such names as pain, suffering, agony, torture. To use a 
term that has something of precision attached to it, they are 
of a most intense character ; they are acute in their nature. 
Their generic name is ' pain/ which expresses an ultimate fact 
of human consciousness, a primary experience of the human 
mind resolvable into nothing more general or more funda- 
mental than itself. The specific designation is 'intense' or 
' acute ; ' the phrase ' acute pain,' is thus a tolerable descrip- 
tion of the species of feelings in question. The peculiar 
distinction of quality, between the pains of cut muscle and 
the pains determined by lacerations of the skin, broken bones, 
burns, blisters, &c, I do not here undertake to reduce to 
language. Nor is it absolutely necessary for the ends of 
mental science to enter nicely into the varieties of acute 
physical suffering ; although for the purposes of the medical 
man the attempt might come within the scope of a treatise of 
Pathology. 

Acute pain, then, may be characterised in language such 
as the following, if any expansion or commentary is requisite 
in addition to the name itself. Being of the class of feelings 
recognised by the general term, pain, (which with its contrast 
pleasure, may be said almost to comprehend the entire sum of 
conscious states) the acuteness or intensity of it is manifested 
by overpowering the vast proportion of other pains and emo- 
tions, so that these although present are for the time being 
submerged and lost to the consciousness. This comparison 
alone determines the degrees of intensity of pains ; and phy- 
sical suffering such as the cases now under consideration stands 
very high in the scale, there being few pains that surpass it, 
and few pleasures that can neutralize it. It is their nature 
either to pass speedily away or else to require active measures 



or excitement, over the bodily members. I may at present cite, as an 
illustration, the effect of a blow ; it being well known that in proportion as 
this is felt as a pain, it causes a shock and agitation over the whole body, 
manifested in the convulsive start, the cry, the contortion of feature, so 
familiar to us in our experience of men and animals. According to this 
view, every variety of consciousness ought to have a special form of diffusive 
manifestation. It is not every state, however, that carries this diffusive 
action far enough to be ostensible as a characteristic outward display. 



88 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

for allaying them, otherwise they soon wear out the strength 
and even the life of the sufferer. 

The description of their character as Emotion is not com- 
plete, unless we advert to the Expression that they stimulate, 
or the effects of that diffusive influence which I look upon as a 
concomitant of feeling. These effects render the mental state 
apparent to others, while the purely conscious phase is known 
only to the individual's self. The expression of acute pain is 
strong and characteristic. There is not, however, much 
difference in this respect between one form and another. The 
body is driven into movements and attitudes of a violent, 
intense character ; sometimes the ordinary movements are 
quickened and at other times contortions and unusual gestures 
are displayed. The suddenness, quickness, intensity, of the 
bodily action, rather than the peculiar direction or form of it, 
constitutes the distinctive character of the situation. Artists, 
in giving the bodily expression of pain, as in the Laocoon, or 
the Crucifixion, differ according to the stage they fix upon, that 
is, according as they take the first moments when the energies 
are still fresh, or the subsequent state of drooping and 
exhaustion, which last gives more room for characteristic 
expression. In the early stage violent convulsive movement 
and intensity of attitude, such as any strong passion might 
bring out, are the points to be noted. If next, we turn 
to the features, whose chief use is expression, we find a much 
more distinctive manifestation. There is a well-known form 
of the countenance that marks the condition of pain, — being 
produced by certain movements of the eyebrows and the mouth 
to be afterwards analyzed ; and in the case of acute pains these 
movements have the same appearance of violence and intensity 
that belongs to the bodily gestures at large. The voice, also 
a medium of expression, sends out acute cries sufficient to 
suggest suffering to every listener. 

Besides instigating these various moving organs with an 
intensity that measures the acuteness of the feeling, the state 
we are describing awakens other manifestations of our 
emotional nature. The outburst of grief and tenderness, — 
tears and sobs — is brought on by pain. The irascible condition, 



VOLITIONAL STIMULUS OF PAIN. 89 

or the various forms of rage, anger, fury, is often a part of the 
wave. So the convulsions of terror are wakened up by the 
same wide-spreading influence. It depends on the character 
of the individual at the moment, whether any, or which of 
these forms and displays of emotion are brought out, and to 
what degree ; but all of them are extremely accessible to the 
stimulus of pain ; anger and terror being more so than grief. 

The foregoing description is meant to comprehend the 
strictly emotional characteristics of pain. Let us pass next to 
the volitional peculiarity, which is likewise very strongly 
marked.* By this I mean, as expressed in the Definition of 
Mind, the stimulus to a definite action for getting free from 
the state. The greater number of feelings have in them more 
or less of the property of spurring to action ; some urge us to act 
for abating the feeling, others for the continuance or increase of 
it ; the one class we term pains, the other pleasures, and although 
there is a broad distinction between these two great divisions 
of our states of consciousness in the region of emotion as above 
stated, yet the best marked and most unequivocal difference 
is that manifested under volition, or in the nature of the action 
that they respectively give birth to. Pain is what we avoid, 
repel, flee from ; pleasure is what we cling to, and labour to 
increase. Intense pains are those that incite us vehemently 
to work for their abatement. 

Thus, therefore, it is a part of the character of physical 
suffering to stimulate strongly every action that is felt to work 
an alleviation or tend to a relief, and to repel strongly all 
actions that heighten the irritation. The struggles of an 
animal to escape from a particular situation, prove to us that 
the creature is in pain. Any movement causing a felt relaxa- 



* I have already observed (see note, p. 86), that after exhausting the 
description of each feeling, as feeling or emotion, we derive additional and 
instructive marks by proceeding to consider the effect of the state in stimu- 
lating to action. Volition, although a distinct fact of mind, implies a 
feeUng as a part of its nature. Every feeling, therefore, has a certain 
character as respects volition ; either it does not stimulate to action at all, 
in which case it is an example of emotion pure and simple, or it does 
stimulate to action, which fact is a property of the feeling, and deservedly 
enters into the description of it. 



90 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

tion of the feeling is strenuously kept up, any movement of 
an aggravating kind is as strenuously resisted. If a means of 
alleviation is known, the sufferer employs it ; if no such means 
is recognised, mere tentative struggling is maintained for the 
chance of relief. If lying down brings ease, that is chosen ; if 
the erect posture gives relief, that posture would be sought 
and retained by the youngest infant or the most inexperienced 
of the brutes. 

Volitionally, one feeling is stronger than another according 
as the one engrosses our activity in preference to the other. 
If a person suffering from the sickening air of a crowded room is 
also liable to pains from exposure to the cold night air, we judge 
that feeling to be strongest which is acted on. This measure 
is solely as regards the spur to action, and not as regards the 
expression, or any of the characters of pure emotion. 

Our delineation of acute pains is not yet complete. We 
have viewed them as emotion and as volition ; we may now 
derive marks of discrimination from the relation they bear to 
Intellect or thought. I shall advert to only one such mark, 
but this points to the very foundation and essence of our 
Intelligence ; I mean the more or less facility of reviving the 
state or feeling in the absence of the physical cause, the ease 
of stirring up the experience as a recollection or idea. 
Conscious states differ remarkably in this particular ; some 
that are most intense while they last, are very difficult to 
realize as a matter of recollection ; their intellectual or ideal 
existence is of a low order. Others again are remarkable for 
their conceivability by an intellectual effort, and are therefore 
more prone to enter into the ideal life of the individual : such 
are the emotions of spectacle, the feelings of the beautiful and 
the sublime. We recognise a superior dignity in the emotions 
that have an ideal or intellectual persistence, as compared 
with such as can exist only in the actual, or while their 
physical stimulus is present. Applying this to the case in 
hand, we are fortunately able to say that acute pains, such as 
those cuts or lacerations whose consideration we have begun 
with, do not persist in the intellect as ideal emotions, and are 



MUSCULAR PAINS. 91 

not easily revived in any effort of recollection. ' Of all intense 
feelings, they may be reckoned to stand lowest in these 
peculiarities : whereby their influence and malignancy become 
confined to the evil hour of their real presence. 

II. So much for the sj'stematic delineation of acute pains 
as exemplified by one particular group, localized in the mus- 
cular tissue. A shorter description will suffice for the others. 
With regard to the class ' spasms ' and ' cramps/ the mode of 
origin is different. What that origin is I cannot pretend to 
say, farther than, as every one knows, that there is some form 
of disease in the first instance. I am equally unable to assign 
the peculiar action that seizes the muscular tissue under spasm. 
This is generally understood to be a forcible and unnatural con- 
traction of the whole or part of a muscle. But the feel/i/ng is well 
known and recognised as one of the most horrible inflictions 
that human nature is liable to ; even surpassing in agony the 
acute suffering typified by lacerations and bruises. It would 
seem to be a form of pain peculiar and specific to the muscular 
tissue ; for although occurring in the alimentary canal in a 
most distressing form, we may presume with reason that the 
muscular fibres of the stomach and intestines are in that case 
the seat of the disturbance. While the feeling is one of pain 
and acuteness in the highest degree, it has a peculiar quality 
of its own, that I can only express by remarking how forcibly 
it sometimes suggests the idea of being drawn two ways at 
once ; as if we were on the rack of conflicting forces. Perhaps, 
however, after all, the difference between it and the former 
class lies more in the degree of acuteness than in any other 
well-marked quality. The acute agony of such feelings rises 
to the pitch of the utterly unendurable. The expression, the 
efforts for relief marking the volitional power, the impression 
left behind, are in proportion vehement and intense. 

12. Another class of feelings connected with the muscles 
may be specified under the same general head of Organic 
Feelings, those arising from over-fatigue. This cause is 
known to produce acute pains of various degrees of intensity, 
from the easily endurable up to severe suffering. It is not 



92 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

necessary to advert to these more specifically, they being 
sufficiently comprehended by referring them to the genus of 
acute pains of the muscles. 

Very different is the state of feeling produced by mere 
ordinary fatigue, which we may introduce here rather than 
under the second division. This is a state not at all painful, 
but the opposite. It is one of the pleasurable experiences 
allied with the muscular system, and merits a full delineation. 

The antecedent cause of this state is exertion, or the 
repeated contraction of the muscle up to exhaustion. Of the 
peculiar condition of the tissue in this state we are unable to 
speak with any precision ; and no mere hypothesis of it would 
serve any end. The particulars we can speak to are the 
Conscious state with the expression, the Volitional aspect, and 
the relation to Intellect, following the order already exempli- 
fied in speaking of acute pains. 

The Feeling, or conscious state, is, we have said, of the 
pleasurable class. The peculiarity of it as a pleasure is not 
intensity or acuteness, but quantity, massiveness, or volume. 
This distinction we shall often have to introduce in our de- 
scriptions of the varieties of human consciousness ; believing it 
to be a real and apt distinction. When, instead of one narrow 
acute pain or pleasure, we have a feebler kind of excitement 
that seems to pervade large masses of the system, this we 
express by saying that the quantity is great and the intensity 
feeble ; the difference between the half-scorching rays of a fire 
and a warm bath would be strictly defined by a similar 
description. Such is the view we take of the state of the 
healthy fatigue of the muscles. The feeling is of course 
pervasive according to the extent of the exercised parts ; and 
within those parts it is a massive or voluminous feeling of 
comparatively little acuteness or intensity. The state is one 
of the pleasures of a life of hard exercise or bodily toil, and 
taken along with the sleep and general sensation of health 
following in its train, counts for a considerable portion of the 
sum of human pleasure. As a more specific mark, I may 
mention what it has in common with the state of exercise 
itself, namely, a feeling of vigour, strength, or intense vitality 



FEELING OF REPOSE. 93 

in the organs of activity. The blood still coursing rapidly 
through the muscular fibres developes a large amount of 
sensibility within them, and the state of repose is favourable 
to the enjoyment of this sensibility. The state is therefore 
very much contrasted with other states of voluminous enjoy- 
ment, such as warmth and repletion ; these contain in them 
nothing of the sense of active vigour now described. 

With regard to the Expression that manifests this emo- 
tional state to the onlooker, I would recal to the reader's 
observation the general fact, that expression is most marked 
in the intense feelings, whether of pleasure or of pain. Even 
very massive and abundant sensations will often yield a very 
languid expression, perhaps no distinguishable expression at 
all. Such is the case with the sensibility of muscles exhausted 
within limits. In so far as this shows itself at all, it is by the 
serene placid expression of a moderate and satisfying enjoy- 
ment. Inaction being part and parcel of the state itself, there 
is no scope for display or the demonstration of the feelings. 
The real expression is the reposing attitude, although this 
belongs more properly to what we have to speak of next, the 
activity for an end, suggested by the state in question. 

The relations of this feeling to Action or Volition, demand 
some preliminary remarks. In the first place, the peculiarity 
of the state being exhaustion consequent on exercise, it natu- 
rally follows that a cessation of activity should be one of the 
acconrpanying circumstances of the feeling. As a mere phy- 
sical fact, fatigue would lead to inaction. Thus there would 
be a discouragement to new effort arising out of the very con- 
ditions of the case, even supposing that the state of feeling 
had in itself a strong volitional spur like the acute pains 
formerly described. 

In the second place, there is an aspect of this state and of 
many other pleasures that brings them under the head of 
pains ; and since pain is almost always a source of volitional 
impulse, we derive thence a descriptive feature to enter into 
our delineation. When repose is forbidden to exhausted 
limbs there is a galling pain, and a consequent powerful 
stimulus to do something for relief. We find that though 



94 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

this pained condition may not be acute like a hurt or wound, 
there is in it a strong massive influence upon the system, 
leading to considerable efforts for the alleviation that rest 
could bring. The measure of volitional force is the exertion 
and sacrifice made to obtain repose. The weary traveller 
lying down in a swamp, or in the neighbourhood of beasts of 
prey, shows how intense is the craving after rest that urges 
his mind. There are other cases of the same nature, where 
the pains of privation are a characteristic part of the feeling 
no less than the pleasures of fruition. 

A third observation of no less importance has to be made 
respecting the state of consciousness growing out of the repose 
of wearied members. The feeling is one of a soothing kind, 
that is to say, instead of irritating the centres of activity 
towards discharging themselves, the opposite effect is caused 
by it. Consequently, volition of every kind is less strongly 
put forth under the influence of such a state. I believe this 
to be a consequence of the feeling itself, co-operating with the 
purely physical tendency to rest that was the subject of my 
first remark. There are many feelings that have this anti- 
volitional or soothing character without being at all con- 
nected with fatigue, as, for example, the sensation of genial 
warmth. 

Apart from all these circumstances, — namely, the physical 
inclination to rest, the powerful stimulus of the pained con- 
dition of prolonged fatigue, the soothing character of the 
mental state, — I should say that the pleasurable feeling now 
under discussion is not one that manifests itself in the way of 
volition. I say this because we do not observe any efforts 
made to secure it in greater quantity, or to prevent it from 
dying away as a pleasure. A volitional pleasure is one that 
fires our active endeavours to prolong and increase it ; such is 
the pleasure of eating and drinking while appetite is yet fresh. 
The pleasure of repose belongs therefore to the class of serene 
emotions : this is the popular description of what is here 
termed un volitional pleasures. The state of serenity and con- 
tentment of mind is their distinguishing feature as regards 
volition, or the active part of our mental system. 



FEELINGS OF MUSCULAR EXERCISE. 95 

The last feature in our systematic delineation respects the 
Intellect, or the degree of continuance or recoverability of the 
feeling in the absence of the fact. Is this one of those states 
out of mind, when out of reality ? or may it be often and 
vividly present as a mere possession of the intellect ? Allow- 
ing, as we must always do, for differences of individual character 
as regards the intellectual recovery of emotional states, I 
should say that this particular feeling is low in the order of 
ideal recoverability, although often present owing to the fre- 
quency of the corresponding bodily conditiou. In respect to 
an assertion of this nature, each person must judge for them- 
selves, according to the actual experience of each. My own 
opinion is grounded chiefly on what I think a true and im- 
portant observation, namely, that the pleasure of mere repose 
after fatigue is not much put forward as an end, or a thing 
expressly aimed at in the pursuits of everyday life. To many 
people it can hardly ever be present at all, if we may judge 
from the utter neglect of physical exercise as a habitual 
element of life. Now it will be seen again and again, as our 
exposition advances, that the intellectual existence of an 
emotional state is what renders it an end of standing pursuit, 
by furnishing a stimulus that may be present when the reality 
is absent. Considering the degree that the feelings of repose 
occupy and engross the mind when they are really present, 
the hold that they take of the intellect in reminiscence is 
remarkably feeble. 

The only other organic feeling of the muscles that I shall 
allude to, is the feeling generated by their nutrition. But of 
this feeling no clear account can be given, unless we are con- 
tent with the probability that it is a portion of the total 
sensibility of united rest and nourishment, and is in part 
absorbed by sleep, enhancing, it may be, the agreeable con- 
sciousness of sinking into slumber. 

II. Of the Feelings of Muscular Exercise. 

13. These are the feelings proper and peculiar to the 
muscular system. Many of those noticed above have a com- 



96 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

rnon nature with other organic feelings ; but the mode ot con- 
sciousness produced by movement and exercise cannot be 
made to spring from any other part of the system. 

I do not here take into account the circumstances that 
stimulate or set on the movement. I desire to keep as close 
as possible to the states of mind generated by the act of 
muscular exertion, howsoever commenced. The stimulus may 
be spontaneous influence, emotion, or volition. Taking the 
entire situation into account, there will be great differences 
according to the mode of origin; but under all these dif- 
ferences there is one thing common, namely, the influence 
spread over the conscious centres when muscular contraction 
takes place. The nature of that consciousness we have now 
to define. 

14. The first and simplest case of muscular exertion, is 
when the exertion is unaccompanied by movement, as in sup- 
porting a weight, or encountering a dead resistance. Here we 
have the feeling probably in the purest and least complicated 
form of it. 

The physical state of the muscle in this state cannot be 
described otherwise than through the medium of the physio- 
logical details already quoted on the subject of muscular action. 
The particles making up the muscular threads are approxi- 
mated by an energetic attraction developed in the muscle 
under the stimulus supplied by the nerves. An intense phy- 
sical force is produced by a peculiar expenditure of the sub- 
stance of the muscular mass ; and in the production of this 
force the tissue is affected, as it were, with a strong internal 
agitation, which can hardly fail to make itself felt in the great 
centre of consciousness. By what nerves the state of muscular 
tension communicates with the brain it would be difficult to 
say: the nerves principally supplied to the muscles are the 
nerves for stimulating its movements, the motor filaments of 
the nerve ramifications. Sensitive nerves may be supplied 
along with these, and may be the medium for transmitting 
the stimulus both of organic states, such as those above 
described, and of the states of tension now under con- 
sideration. 



FEELING OF MUSCULAR EXERTION. 97 

Such being the physical condition, we must now endeavour 
to delineate the nature of the Consciousness that accompanies 
and grows out of muscular exertion. We may safely affirm 
in the first place, that this is a pleasurable state ; indeed when 
the muscles are in a fresh condition, the feeling is pleasurable 
to a degree, although from the exhaustion that follows exer- 
cise the enjoyment is temporary, and changes into pain if the 
effort is too long continued. With regard to the character of 
the pleasure viewed as an emotion, we may put it down as 
massive or large in quantity; it is as if a great body of 
stimulus were at work ; a dense and voluminous influence 
creeps through the system. The large total amount of feeling 
makes itself known not only by surpassing many other plea- 
sures when brought to a comparison, but also by the extent of 
pain and irritation capable of being subdued by it. This last 
circumstance has great importance in many ways ; there is 
hardly anything so much resorted to as muscular exertion for 
quenching states of pain. But probably this power of dissolving 
irritation will, in the present instance, be better treated of 
among the volitional properties. 

The precise degree of quantity or massiveness belonging 
to muscular pleasures can be given only by comparison with 
the various kinds of pleasure, or with some standard, if 
any standard could be set up. But it is better to defer an 
attempt of this kind till we are farther advanced in our detail 
of states of feeling, and to compare each case only with those 
previously surveyed. At the present early stage we have no 
scope for such a comparison. 

I have remarked already when speaking of the state of 
repose after fatigue, that there is a peculiarity in the feelings 
connected with muscular exertion, that distinguishes them 
from all others ; a difference not in degree but in kind, and 
this we characterise by such phrases as the sense of power, 
the feeling of energy, and others to that effect. This is an 
ultimate phase of human consciousness that we can call atten- 
tion to and compare with other states, but cannot resolve into 
anything else. As a root of some of our higher forms of 
emotion, for example, the feelings connected with the posses- 

H 



98 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

sion and exercise of power, there is an additional importance 
attached to it. But taken by itself we must look upon it as 
an interesting element of muscular feeling, being, in fact, one 
of the relishes of that pleasure, and by some constitutions very 
keenly enjoyed. 

By the very nature of the case, Active pleasures are apt 
to be wanting in Expression, properly so called. The organs 
are so completely employed in the exercise itself, that they 
are not disposable as instruments of expression. Nevertheless 
we may note the gleesome and joyous excitement of the young 
in the midst of their active sports. The pleasurable stimulus 
of exertion diffuses itself over the whole system, lighting up 
the features with gaiety and mirth, and prompting the vocal 
organs to cries of delight. The various modes of expressing 
the feeling are so many new pleasures ; they are an addition 
to the exercise that is the source of the emotion. 

Turning next to the Volitional peculiarities of the feeling 
of muscular exertion, there is a complication similar to what 
I have already remarked upon under the feeling of repose* 
Indeed we fall at once into a difficulty, or an aj)parent con- 
tradiction. For the state itself arises from some action 
already set on, and therefore there is no room for a new bent 
at the instance of the resulting emotion. If a porter is 
carrying two hundred weight on his back, his activity is 
already occupied, and it is irrelevant to speak of the in- 
fluence of his feelings upon his further action. Now all this 
may be true, and yet there may be a specific tendency in the 
feelings of exertion to incite us to act for giving them further 
scope, or for restraining them. For, although in most in- 
stances, our action is directed entirely to some outward end, 
as when the manual labourer is engaged in his toil, at other 
times the outward end is a mere pretext for muscular enjoy- 
ment, and in that case the feeling disposes of our activity. 
When we descend into the gymnastic arena to convert 
surplus energy into pleasure, the conscious state is then the 
spur and guide of our action. We continue our exercise 
while the pleasure lasts, and cease when it ceases. The 



FEELING OF MUSCULAR EXERTION. 99 

inward feeling is, in such a case, an end and a prompter of 
voluntary action. 

In these circumstances, we notice that the volitional spur 
to keep up exertion is very high in the first moments of fresh 
and unexpended vigour. At the outset of the exercise it is 
difficult to check or restrain the pursuit. This, however, is 
not wholly the result of the pleasurable feeling prompting us 
to go on; we must allow something to that spontaneous 
discharge of activity, that I have insisted on as a fact of 
our constitution. The feeling of pleasure doubtless works 
along with the spontaneous tendency, and so far there is a 
volitional power in the conscious state induced by exertion. 
This power is not inconsiderable on the whole, although many 
pleasures surpass the present in this particular. If we take 
the cases where the feeling of exertion is at its highest — 
namely, the concurrence of youth with high muscular energy, 
or the athletic constitution at its prime, the pleasure will be 
very great indeed, and the volitional promptings to keep it 
up equally great. With the generality of men, however, the 
same strong terms cannot be applied to describe this species 
of emotion, which in them sinks down to a second or third- 
rate pleasure. 

It is also to be noted, that exertion is a means of soothing 
morbid activity of the nervous system, and is to that extent 
anti-volitional, like the state of healthy repose after muscular 
fatigue. There is here an effect partly physical and partly 
mental: physical, because exercise gives a new direction to 
the organic processes of circulation, respiration, &c. ; and 
mental, because the emotion itself is capable of displacing 
and dissolving a considerable amount of the other emotions 
possessing the mind at the time. 

With regard, finally, to the Intellectual aspect of this state 
of mind — namely, its existence as a recollection and an idea, 
we must still pronounce it of a low order. Generally speak- 
ing, the feeling does not frequently or readily occupy the 
thoughts in the entire cessation of the reality, and is not an 
object of longing, of prospective or retrospective interest. 

h2 



100 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

This statement, which appears true in the main, is liable to 
a number of exceptions and qualifications, which I do not 
here enter upon. 

15. Having thus endeavoured to present a delineation of 
the first and simplest variety of muscular consciousness under 
exertion, it remains only to cite a few examples of this form 
of the feeling. 

The supporting of a weight on the back, head, or chest, 
or by the arms, is a common example of dead tension. No 
other feeling besides the pure sensibility of muscular contrac- 
tion can enter into this case. The most interesting form of it 
is the support of the body's own weight, which yields a per- 
petual feeling of the muscular kind, varying with the atti- 
tudes. The feeling is least when we lie at full length in bed, 
and greatest in the erect posture. Sometimes the weight is 
oppressive to us, and gives the sensation of fatigue; in a 
more fresh condition of the muscles it makes one item of our 
pleasurable consciousness. The fatigue of standing erect for 
a length of time is, perhaps, one of the commonest cases of 
muscular exhaustion. The pleasure of standing up after a 
lengthened repose gives an opposite feeling. When the 
bodily strength is great, the laying on of a burden is a new 
pleasure. 

This case of great muscular tension, without movement, 
presents itself in an infinite variety of forms, in the course 
of mechanical operations, and in many other ways. In 
holding on as a drag, in offering or encountering resistance 
of any sort, in compressing, squeezing, clenching, wrestling, — 
we have various forms of the situation, and the foregoing 
description of the emotional state ought, if correct, to be 
applicable to all of them. 

A certain amount of movement may be permitted without 
essentially altering the case of dead tension, as in dragging a 
vehicle, or a boat, and in efforts of slow traction generally. 
In such cases a considerable number of muscles are kept 
tense at nearly one position, while those more especially con- 
cerned in locomotion are alternately relaxed and passed 
through the successive stages of contraction. This last element 



FEELING OF SLOW MOVEMENTS. 101 

I have expressly reserved, intending to make it a class by 
itself, the one next entered on. 

1 6. When muscular tension brings about movements, 
there must be a gradually increasing contraction, and not a 
mere expenditure of power at one fixed attitude. Each 
muscle has to pass through a course of shortening, be- 
ginning, it may be, at the extreme state of relaxation, and 
passing on, sometimes slowly, and at other times rapidly, to 
the most shortened and contracted condition. The sensibility 
developed during this process, is greater in degree, and even 
somewhat different in kind, from that now discussed. As a 
general rule, the feeling is more intense and keen under 
movement, than under exertion without movement. The 
successive contraction of the muscle would seem capable of 
oricnnatinfT a more vivid stimulus than the fixed contraction. 
We even find, that in different degrees of rapidity, the sen- 
sibility changes considerably, which requires us to make a 
division of movements into several kinds. 

17. Let us first advert to what we may term, by com- 
parison, sloio movements. By these I understand such as a 
loitering, sauntering walk, an indolent style of doing things, a 
solemn gesture, a drawling speech, whatever is set down as 
leisurely, deliberate, dawdling. The emotion arising from this 
kind of movement is far greater than an equal effort of 
dead tension would produce. Indeed we may say, that this 
is an extremely voluminous and copious state of feeling : 
being both abundant and strong, although deficient in the 
element that we recognise as the sense of energy, or of 
expended force; in fact, approaching more to the class of 
passive emotions. We may derive the greatest amount of 
pleasurable sensibility, at the least cost of exertion, through 
the means of well-concerted slow movements. The emotional 
state is not overwhelmed by the expenditure of active power, 
and hence the enjoyment is keen. We are thoroughly alive 
to the effect that is produced, and thus a feeble stimulus 
yields a great pleasure. The peculiar quality of the state 
may be still farther described by specifying the emotions in 
close relation to it. We find among these the emotions of 



102 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

awe, solemnity, veneration, and others of the class of mingled 
tenderness and fear, indicating still further the deficiency of 
active tone already adverted to. The funeral pace, the 
solemn, slow enunciation of devotional exercises, the drawling 
tones of organ music, are chosen on account of this relation- 
ship. The whole expression of the feeling is in accordance 
with the nature of the action itself. The other members, 
chiming in with the principal, affect movements of the like 
slowness. The action suits the word, and the word the action. 
There is a striking and instructive similarity of character 
between this feeling and the state of approaching sleep. In 
both cases we have a luxurious passive emotion, arising out 
of the peculiar condition of the muscles; and such is the 
accordance or sympathy of the two, that the one is well known 
to bring on the other with its accompanying reality. 

Slow movements are entirely out of keeping with a fresh 
and active bodily tone ; they are repugnant and intolerable in 
such a situation. They are nevertheless of great use in 
soothing down a morbid excitement, or an excessive and 
mistimed activity, and in preparing the way for absolute 
repose. After a bustling day, tranquillity is restored by the 
sympathy of languid movements, or stately music. Hence 
one of the influences ascribed to acts of devotion and the 
forms of worship. 

There is every reason to believe that movements, gra- 
dually increasing or gradually diminishing, are more productive 
of pleasurable emotion than such as are of a uniform cha- 
racter. Indeed a uniform movement is altogether of artificial 
acquirement. The natural swing of the limbs tends to get 
quicker and quicker, up to the full stretch, and to die away 
again gradually. Through that deep-seated bond which con- 
nects feeling with action, and generates in our emotions the 
tendency to perpetuate themselves, if of the pleasurable kind, 
each emotional state feeds itself, and, in many cases, is satisfied 
only with an increase. A vast number of our feelings are of 
this thirsting character, and a bare and even continuance is 
felt as a privation. But, altogether apart from this view of 
the great law of volition, there would appear to be a special 



FEETJXGS OF QUICK MOVEMENTS. 103 

emotion connected with the acceleration or steady diminution 
of movement. The gradual dying away of a motion is plea- 
surable and graceful in every sort of activity, in gesture, in 
the dance, in speech, in vision. The 'dying fall' in sound is 
not so obviously a case of muscular effect, but I am satisfied 
that it is really so. If a common character pervades all such 
cases, the sensibility can belong only to the muscles, and if so 
this is the sweetest and most thrilling of all the muscular 
emotions. It is one of the ends of artistic education to acquire 
movements to bring out this effect. 

1 8. We pass next to the consideration of quick move- 
ments. They differ considerably in feeling both from dead 
exertion and from a slow rate of action. Although there is 
still a common muscular sensibility at the bottom, the specific 
nature of it is very widely varied. The first and obvious 
effect of quickness is to increase the stimulus or excitement 
passing to the nerve centres. The feeling must for this 
reason become more intense, or vehement. But it would be 
a mistake to suppose that it always possesses the mind more 
thoroughly than the emotions of slow movement. The activity 
of the frame prevents the emotion from developing itself 
fully, and hence with an increased stimulus there may be 
less of actual feeling. What there is of emotion is more 
vehement, and more bound up with the sense of action and 
energy, which is the characteristic ingredient of muscular 
sensibility. A further peculiarity of quick movements, as 
distinguished from the mere putting forth of force, is the 
tendency to excite and inflame the system into a still more 
intense condition, such as we term elation, animal spirits, with 
boisterous manifestations: what may be called mechanical 
intoxication. The effect thus arising from rapid movements 
furnishes a salient proof of the influence belonging to move- 
ment, over and beyond dead tension. It is not the mere pour- 
ing in of nervous stimuli, and the development of great con- 
tractile force in a muscle, but the actual course of contraction 
gone through that yields the greatest amount of excitement 
in the brain, an excitement not satisfied till it impress a 
similar activity on all the organs of the frame. The power 



104 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

of propagation and increase is strikingly seen in the influence 
of quick movements. In a rapid walk, still more in a run, 
the consciousness is excited, the gesticulations and speech 
are rapid, the features betray a high tension. The increase of 
emotional fervour must be attributed to an exalted condition 
of the nervous system, of the kind produced by intoxicating 
stimulants in general. It requires a special education, easier 
in some temperaments than in others, to perform rapid 
movements with coolness. 

Examples of this class of motions and feelings are suffi- 
ciently abundant. They are expressly sought to give hilarity 
and excitement to human life. The chace, the dance, the 
vehemence of oratory and gesture, are prized for their stimu- 
lating character as well as from their proper sensations. In 
the ecstatic worship of antiquity, in the rites of Bacchus and 
Demeter, a peculiar phrenzy overtook the worshippers, yielding 
an enjoyment of the most intense and violent character, and 
in its expression mad and furious. This state is often brought 
on among the Orientals of the present day, and always in a 
similar manner, that is, by intense and rapid dancing and 
music under the infection of a multitude. 

Movements, when too quick, frequently excite the nerves 
to the state of dizziness and fainting, showing the extreme 
effect of the peculiarity we are describing. 

19. We may advert next to some of the minor incidents 
connected with movement, and exerting notable influences on 
the consciousness. The sudden interruption of any movement 
causes a feeling of a very painful and unsettling kind. When 
one has drawn a blow and meets a sudden arrest half way, 
there is a revulsion of feeling that is very hard to bear. 
Doubtless there has been some adaptation of the impetus to 
the distant end, which is perverted when some nearer thing 
is put in the way. A shock or encounter that we are prepared 
for is not unpleasant, but one coming by surprise gives a most 
painful and confusing jerk to mind and body. Hardly any- 
thing rouses a burst of anger more readily than a sudden and 
unexpected check : being of the nature of an interruption to 
the whole bent and current of the system, the occurrence of it 






FEELING OF LOSS OF SUPPOET. 105 

in any form is the occasion of a painfu] outburst most difficult 
to be appeased. The tripping of the foot, a sudden obstacle 
in our way, an arresting hand on the shoulder, cause a shock 
to the whole frame, often attended with a cold sweat, and 
taking some time to recover from. The sudden stoppage of 
any of our movements is the most usual cause of this general 
and distressing interruption, — an interruption that probably 
typifies a large class of feelings of the painful kind. 

20. An equally remarkable and still more distressing cir- 
cumstance connected with movements, is that arising from the 
sudden loss of support, as when the footing, or any prop that 
we lean upon, suddenly gives way. The contraction of a 
muscle demands two fixed points of resistance at its ex- 
tremities ; if one of those breaks loose, the force of the con- 
traction has nothing to spend itself upon, and a false position 
is incurred. The contraction suddenly freed from its resistance 
does not make a vehement convulsive collapse like a spring ; 
it would appear rather that the contractive force ceases almost 
immediately; and the sensation resulting is one of a most dis- 
agreeable kind. As in the previous case, this sensation seems 
to result rather from the jar given to the nervous system than 
from any influence flowing out of the muscle. The whole frame 
is agitated with a most revulsive shock, the cold perspiration 
is felt all over, and a sickening feeling seizes the brain. The 
breaking down of any prop that we are resting on, the 
snapping of a rope, or the sinking of a foundation, exemplify 
the most intense form of the effect. But we may probably 
look upon the peculiar influence whose repetition induces sea- 
sickness, to be of the same nature. The sinking of the ship 
has exactly the same unhinging action in a milder degree, 
although when continued for a length of time, this produces a 
far worse disturbance than any single break-down, however 
sudden. The precise physiological action in this situation does 
not seem agreed upon ; the feeling is known to be one of the 
most distressing that human nature is subject to, being an 
intense and exaggerated form of stomachic sickness, with 
sensations in the head more aggravated than those occurring 
under any ordinary emetic. 



106 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

Vertigo and swimming of the head are states that may be 
induced by movements of various kinds. Whirling is a com- 
mon cause. Too great rapidity of any movement may have 
the same effect. 

The state of feeling arising when a prop or support gives 
way may be experienced through mental causes, as when some 
great loss or disappointment overtakes a person. There is the 
same breach of confidence and the same nervous shock in both 
instances, although in the one the pure physical action is 
necessarily stronger. 

21. We must advert next to the passive movements. 
Under these we include the case of being driven, or carried 
along, by some power without us. Riding in a vehicle is the 
commonest instance. One of the pleasures of human life is to 
be driven along at a moderate speed, in an easy carriage. Now 
it may be supposed at first sight, that there ought to be no 
feeling of muscular exertion whatsoever in this case, seeing that 
the individual is moved by other force than his or her own : 
and under certain circumstances this would be strictly true. 
We have no feeling of our being moved round with the earth's 
rotation, or through space by the movement about the sun. So 
in a ship we often lose all sense of being driven or carried along, 
and feel pretty much as if there were no forward movement 
at all. The sensibility arising in a carriage movement, is in 
part imbibed through the eye, which is regaled by the shifting 
scene, and partly through the irregularities of the movement, 
which demand a very gentle action of the muscles of the body 
in order to adapt it to those irregularities. By springs and 
cushions all violence of shock is done away, while the easy 
exercise caused by the commencement and stoppages of the 
motion, by the slight risings and fallings of the road, is some- 
what of the nature of that influence already described as 
arising from slow and languid movements. It must not be 
forgotten, however, that the stimulus of the fresh air, procured 
at little expense of exertion, and with the eye amused by a 
shifting scene, is no small part of the agreeableness, as well as 
wholesomeness of the situation. 

In horse exercise there is a larger amount of the ingredient 



FEELINGS OF PASSIVE MOVEMENTS. 107 

of activity. The rider is saved a part of the exhaustion caused 
in walking, and has yet exercise enough for the stimulus of the 
bodily functions, and for exciting muscular pleasure. 

With children, the relish for passive movements seems 
remarkably keen. In them, however, such movements are 
rarely passive. When swung, or jumped, or driven, the child 
generally puts forth vigorous exertions of its own, and converts 
the passive into an active exercise, while children are parti- 
cularly apt in their relish for the pleasure given to the eye by 
the shifting scene. 

The rocking chair, introduced by the Americans, who seem 
specially attentive to the luxuries of muscular sensibility, is 
calculated for passive movements. Anciently furniture was 
adapted for the pleasures of repose solely, but now the boy's 
rocking horse has its representative among the appurtenances 
of grown men. 

On the whole, it is apparent that a large fraction of physical 
enjoyment flows out of the moving apparatus and muscular 
tissue of the body. By ingeniously varying the modes of it, 
this enjoyment may be increased almost without limit. The 
pleasure comes incidentally to manual labour, when moderate 
in amount and alternated with due sustenance and repose, and 
is a great element of field sports and active diversions of every 
kind ; it is a great part of the pleasures of locomotion ; and 
in gymnastic exercises and athletic displays forms the prin- 
cipal ingredient. 

III. Of the Discriminative or Intellectual Sensibility 

of Muscle. 

22. In the two foregoing heads I have aimed at ex- 
hausting the emotional sensibility of muscle, or the feelings 
that have reference to pleasure or pain. Although these 
feelings may have more or less of an intellectual existence, 
that is, may remain in the memory and influence the pursuits, 
they are not on that account intellectual feelings. This desig- 
nation indicates a quite different class of sensibilities, a class 
having very little of emotional character, so little that they 



108 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

are not counted in the sum of human happiness or misery, but 
having, nevertheless, a very high valtfe as instruments or 
media in attaining to the one and avoiding the other. They 
are comprised in the power that we have of discriminating the 
different degrees oi force and range of muscular action. Our 
inward impressions are different for a small exertion and for a 
greater, and also for two different situations of a limb caused 
by a smaller and a larger degree of contraction. The emo- 
tional sensibility may not be very much altered by a great 
additional contraction in a muscle, indicated by a greater 
flexion of the part moved, but there is, notwithstanding, a dis- 
criminative sense that recognises the distinctness of the two 
positions. Discrimination is a very different thing from vivid 
emotion, and is often greatest when emotion is faintest. There 
is a contrast pervading the whole region of mind between dis- 
criminative and emotional sensibility. Now discrimination 
is the basis of intelligence. Even the discovery of agreement 
presupposes difference. 

There are three distinct varieties of difference in muscular 
action. The first is the degree of exertion, or of expenditure 
of force, which necessarily measures the resistance to be 
encountered. The second respects the amount of contraction 
of the muscle, or the stage of shortening which it has reached ', 
this connects itself with the situation or range of the organ 
moved. The third head is the greater or less rapidity of con- 
traction, corresponding with the swiftness or velocity of the 
movement. In distinguishing the qualities of external things, 
and in forming permanent notions of the world, all these dis- 
criminations are brought into play. 

23. First, with respect to degrees of exertion or of expended 
force. 

Along with every kind of feeling whatsoever we have a 
sense of degree or intensity. We can discriminate between a 
more and a less vehement emotion. When experiencing the 
pain of fatigue, or the pleasure of healthy exercise, we recognise 
differences in the different stages of the feeling. To be affected 
more or less in different circumstances is almost a conse- 
quence of being affected at all. Accordingly, as an emotion 



DISCRIMINATION OF DEGREES OF EXERTION. 109 

rises or falls, our difference of sensibility leads to a comparison, 
and the comparison gives birth to what we call the sense of 
difference. There is implied in it a certain amount of per- 
manence of a past impression along with the full reality of 
the present; without some such endurance of impressions 
comparison would be impossible ; we should live in the 
present moment and in that alone. This sentiment of dif- 
ference determines our voluntary activity ; that is to say, it 
prompts a continuance of the action that heightens a pleasure 
or soothes a pain. It goes still further, and is the foundation 
of all those discriminative impressions of outward things 
entering into our intellectual comprehension of the world. 
Sights and sounds, and touches and tastes, have a variety 
corresponding in some degree to the variety of natural objects, 
and thereby constitute what we call our ■ knowledge" of those 
objects. 

To apply this to the case now before us, we have a certain 
feeling or emotion when called to exert our muscular energy 
in setting on movement, or in encountering resistance. We 
have a certain degree of consciousness for some one degree of 
exertion ; when the exertion increases, so does the conscious- 
ness. If a porter has a load on his back of one hundred 
weight, he has a peculiar and distinct muscular feeling associ- 
ated with it ; if other thirty pounds were added, he would have 
a sense of the addition in the increased expenditure of force ; 
if thirty pounds were removed, he would have a feeling of 
diminished expenditure. In short, there is a perfect discri- 
mination of degrees and difference of muscular energy, which 
serves us as a means of discriminating the resistances that we 
encounter. By this means we say that one body resists more 
than another, possesses in greater degree the quality that, 
according to circumstances, we call momentum, inertia, weight, 
or power. When we encounter two forces in succession, as in 
a wrestling match or a dead push, we estimate them according 
to this sensibility, the one greater, the other less, as it may 
happen. 

24. Among the various cases where the sense of graduated 
resistance comes into play, we may mention first, the momen- 



110 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

turn or force of moving bodies. Where we have to check or 
resist something in motion, as in bringing a vehicle to rest, 
our sensibility to expended exertion leaves with us an impres- 
sion corresponding to the momentum of the vehicle. If we 
were immediately after to repeat the act with another vehicle 
heavier or swifter than the first, we should have a sense of in- 
creased effort, which would mark our estimate of the difference 
of the two forces. If the impressions thus made were gifted 
with a certain kind of permanence, so that they could be 
revived at an after time, to be compared with some new case 
of checking a moving body, we should be able to say which of 
the three was greatest and which least, and we could thus 
have a scale of sensibilities corresponding to the three different 
degrees of moving force. 

The effort of traction presents another example of measured 
estimate of expended force. Every carriage horse knows the 
difference of draught between one carriage and another, 
between rough and smooth ground, and between up hill and 
down hill. This difference the animal comes to associate with 
the carriage, or with the sight of the road, and in consequence 
manifests preferences whenever there is an opportunity ; 
choosing a level instead of a rising road, or the smooth side in 
preference to the rough. 

The appreciation of weight comes under the same descrip- 
tion of sensibility. This applies to burdens in general, and also 
to the discrimination of quantity of material through weight. 
We remark a difference between half an ounce and an ounce, or 
between five pounds and six pounds, when we try first the one 
weight and then the other. The generality of people can 
appreciate far nicer differences than these. A sensitive hand 
would feel the effect of a very small fraction of an ounce 
added to a pound. In this respect, there would appear to be 
wide constitutional differences, and also differences resulting 
from practice, among different individuals. We are all sen- 
sitive to some extent, but there is for each person a degree of 
minuteness of addition or subtraction that ceases to be felt ; 
this is the limit of sensibility, or the measure of delicacy in 
the individual case. 



APPRECIATION OF WEIGHT. Ill 

There are two modes of appreciating weight, the relative, 
and the absolute. By relative weights we understand the 
comparison of two or more weights together, or by taking 
them in turn, they being all actually present ; as when among 
a heap of stones we pick out what we deem the heaviest. 
Absolute weight implies a permanent standard, and a per- 
manent impression of that standard. When taking up a lump 
of lead, and feeling the weight of it, I pronounce it to be 
seven pounds, I make a comparison between the sense of the 
lead and the impression acquired by handling the standard 
weight of seven pounds, or things known to be equivalent 
thereto. This absolute comparison, therefore, implies that 
enduring and revivable sensibility to impressions of resistance 
above alluded to as a possible fact of the human constitution. 
The fact is not only possible but real, as every one knows. 
We can acquire a permanent sense of any one given weight 
or degree of resistance so as to be able at all times to compare 
it with whatever weight may be presented. A receiver of 
posted letters acquires an engrained sensibility to half an ounce, 
and can say of any letter put into his hand whether it pro- 
duces a sensibility equal to or under the standard. This is a 
result pre-eminently intellectual in its nature ; the process of 
acquisition that brings it about ranks as a foundation of our 
intelligence. The sensibilities that can assume this permanent 
character, so as to be used in comparison, without reference to 
their original cause, are truly intellectual sensibilities. In 
speaking of the pains and pleasures arising out of the muscular 
system, I ventured to give as one of their attributes that they 
were not liable to be revived as mere impressions in the ab- 
sence of the reality, that therefore they stood low in the intel- 
lectual scale. This description points to some other feelings that 
have a more abiding place in the life of intellect or ideas ; 
and the feelings now specified are of that nature. In other 
words, I mean to affirm, that the sense of difference or degree 
in resistance is more endurable, more recoverable, more 
independent of the actual pressure, the real presence of the 
objects, than the emotional excitement, the pleasure or pain 
of intense muscular action. Of two burdens that stimulated 



112 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

an intense emotion of active expenditure, we can more easily 
retain the fact of one being greater than the other, — or the 
sensibility that would enable us to compare some new and 
present burden with them, — than we can realize over again 
all the vehement sense of exertion, the keen massive emotion, 
the perspiration, and the heat that constituted the pleasure or 
the pain of the moment. The mere sense of the difference is 
evidently a small and limited portion of the entire conscious 
state ; and for that reason alone it would be more revivable. 
To re-agitate the whole frame with the entire current of 
that emotion, perhaps at a time when the state of the body 
and mind is unfavourable to it, cannot be so easy as to revive 
a portion of the sensibility that is not connected with much 
excitement. It is not necessary to revive the whole in order 
to revive the measure or estimate of the whole, and that 
portion sufficing for the comparative estimate is the portion 
available for the purpose now under consideration. 

The sensitiveness to relative weight, or to things compared 
together, may not be the same as the sensitiveness to absolute 
weight, which implies the engrained impression of the 
standard. Both may be cultivated, but the one is a cultiva- 
tion of mere sensibility, the other is an intellectual acquisition, 
and may depend on a distinct quality or region of mind. 

Although the use of the balance supersedes to a very great 
extent the sensibility to weight residing in the muscular 
system, there are occasions where this sensibility can display 
its acuteness. In many manual operations, weight is often 
estimated without the aid of the balance. In throwing 
weapons, or any description of missile to reach a mark, an 
estimate of weight must enter into the computation of force 
expended ; and they that have a distinguishing delicacy of 
the sense of resistance will come much sooner to perfection in 
the exercise. 

In appreciating the cohesiveness of tenacious bodies, — the 
thickness of a dough, or the toughness of a clay, the same 
sense of resistance comes into operation. In like manner the 
elasticity of elastic substances — the strength of a spring, the 
rebound of a cushion — comes to be discriminated with more 
or less nicety. 



FEELING OF MUSCULAR RANGE. ] 13 

25. The second attribute of muscular discrimination relates 
to the amount of contraction of the muscle, or the degree of 
shortening, irrespective of the energy put forth. This sensi- 
bility qualifies the mind for the perception of a new class of 
external attributes. 

Under this head it may be asserted that when a muscle 
begins to contract, or a limb to bend, we have a distinct sense of 
how far the contraction and the bending are carried ; that there 
is something in the special sensibility that makes one mode 
of feeling for half contraction, another mode for three- fourths, 
and another for total contraction. Our feeling of moving 1 
organs, or of contracting muscles, has been already affirmed to 
be different from our feeling of dead tension, — something 
more intense, keen, and exciting ; and I am now led to assert, 
from my best observations and by inference from acknowledged 
facts, that the extent of range of a movement, the degree of 
shortening of a muscle, is a matter of discriminative sensibility. 
I believe it to be much less pronounced, less exact, than the 
sense of resistance above described, but to be not the less real 
and demonstrable. 

If we suppose a weight raised, by the flexing of the arm, 
first four inches, and then eight inches ; it is obvious that the 
mere amount of exertion, or expended power, will be greater 
and the sensibility increased in proportion. In this view, the 
sense of range would simply be the sense of a greater or less 
continuance of the same effort, that effort being expended in 
movement. We can have no difficulty in believing that there 
should be a discriminating sensibility in this case ; it seems 
very natural that we should be differently affected by an action 
continued four or five times longer than another. If this be 
admitted, as true to observation, and as inevitably arising from 
the existence of any discrimination whatsoever of degrees of 
expended power, everything is granted that is contended for at 
present. It is not meant to affirm that at each degree of 
shortening of a muscle, or each intermediate attitude of a 
limb, there is an impression made on the centres that can be 
distinguished from the impression of every other position or 
degree of shortening ; it is enough to require that the range 

I 



114 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

or amount of movement gone over should be a matter of dis- 
tinct perception through the sensibility to the amount of force 
expended in time, the degree of effort being the same. The 
sensibility now in question differs from the former chiefly in 
making the degree turn upon duration, and not upon the 
amount expended each instant ; and it seems to me impossible 
to deny that force increased or diminished simply as regards 
continuance, is as much a subject of discriminative sensibility as 
force increased or diminished in the intensity of the sustained 
effort. 

It is in the special senses of touch and sight, or rather in 
the muscular sensibility united with those senses, that the 
feeling of range is most conspicuously manifested. When in- 
stead of swinging the arm in empty space, we draw the hand 
over the surface of a table, the sense of range is made more 
distinct by the prolongation of the rubbing contact. So with 
sight, as we shall show in the proper place. But in the mean- 
time, it is necessary to recognise an independent sensibility of 
muscle to this attribute of range, for without such inherent 
sensibility the addition of a sensation of special sense would 
not suffice to give birth to the discrimination we are now con- 
tending for. 

26. If the sense of degrees of range be thus admitted as a 
genuine muscular discrimination, its functions in outward per- 
ception are very important. The attributes of extension and 
space fall under its scope. In the first place, it gives the 
feeling of linear extension, inasmuch as this is measured by 
the sweep of a limb, or other organ moved by muscles. The 
difference between six inches and eighteen inches is expressed 
to us by the different degrees of contraction of some one 
group of muscles ; those, for example, that flex the arm, or 
in walking, those that flex or extend the lower limb. The 
inward impression corresponding to the outward fact of six 
inches in length, is an impression arising from the continued 
shortening of a muscle, a true muscular sensibility. It is the 
impression of a muscular effort having a certain continuance ; 
a greater length produces a greater continuance (or a more 



DISCRIMINATION OF DEGREES OF EXTENSION. 115 

rapid movement^), and in consequence an increased feeling of 
expended power. 

The discrimination of length in any one direction includes 
extension in every direction. Whether it be length, breadth, 
or height, the perception has precisely the same character. 
Hence superficial and solid dimensions, the size or magnitude 
of a solid object, come to be felt in a similar manner. But we 
shall defer the consideration of this attribute till we come 
to speak of the senses, more especially Touch and Sight. 

It will be obvious that what is called situation or Locality 
must come under the same head, as these are measured by 
distance taken along with direction ; direction being itself 
estimated by distance, both in common observation and in 
mathematical theory. In like manner, form or shape is 
ascertained through the same primitive sensibility to extension 
or range. 

By the muscular sensibility thus associated with prolonged 
contraction we can therefore compare different degrees of the 
attribute of space, in other words, difference of length, surface, 
situation, and form. When comparing two different lengths 
we can feel which is the greater, just as in comparing two 
different weights or resistances. We can also, as in the case 
of weight, acquire some absolute standard of comparison, 
through the permanency of impressions sufficiently often re- 
peated. We can engrain the feeling of contraction of the 
muscles of the lower limb due to a pace of thirty inches, and 
can say that some one given pace is less or more than this 
amount. According to the delicacy of the muscular tissue we 
can, by shorter or longer practice, acquire distinct impressions 
for every standard dimension, and can decide at once as to 
whether a given length is four inches or four and a half, nine 
or ten, twenty or twenty-one. This sensibility to size, enabling 
us to dispense with the use of measures of length, is an acquire- 
ment suited to many mechanical operations. In drawing, 
painting, and engraving, and in the plastic arts, the engrained 
discrimination of the most delicate differences is an indis- 
pensable qualification. 

12 



116 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

27. The third attribute of muscular discrimination is the 
velocity or speed of the movement. It is difficult to separate 
this from the foregoing. In the feeling of range, velocity 
answers the same purpose as continuance ; both imply an 
enhancement of effort, or of expended power, different in its 
nature from the increase of dead effort in one fixed situation. 
We must learn to feel that a slow motion for a long time is 
the same as a quicker movement with less duration ; which 
we can easily do by seeing that they both produce the same 
effect in exhausting the full range of a limb. If we experi- 
ment upon the different ways of accomplishing a total sweep 
of the arm, we shall find that slow movements long continued 
are equal to quick motions of short continuance, and we are 
thus able by either course to acquire to ourselves a measure of 
range and lineal extension. 

We have already seen that there is a characteristic dif- 
ference between effort expended in movement and effort 
expended in dead resistance : the one is more keen, fiery, 
and exciting than the other. This peculiar exciting character 
seems to us as the means of discriminating the two kinds of 
effort, and also helps to discriminate the degrees or pace of 
movement ; a more rapid action produces a different mode of 
excitement from one less rapid. This is to us a measure of 
speed, which, as well as continuance, is a measure of extension, 
or space moved over. Whether we fasten upon the slow 
movement with long continuance, or the quick movement 
with short continuance, we get a characteristic and peculiar 
sensibility different for every amount of length, and serving 
as our estimate and impression of such amount. But besides 
using velocity as a means of measuring length, we require it 
as a measure of itself, that is to say, we are often called upon 
to judge of the different velocities of moving bodies ; our own 
speed in walking, for example, or the rate of any object 
moving past us. We can not only compare two different 
velocities tried in succession, but we can also acquire, as with 
weight and size, the engrained impression of some standard 
velocity, wherewith to compare any case that occurs. 

28. We would thus trace the perception of the mathe- 






PERCEPTIONS DUE TO MUSCULAR SENSIBILITY. 117 

matical and mechanical properties of matter to the muscular 
sensibility alone. We admit that this perception is by no 
means very accurate if we exclude the special senses, but we 
are bound to show at the outset that these senses are not 
essential to the perception, as we shall afterwards show that it is 
to the muscular apparatus associated with the senses that their 
more exalted sensibility must be also ascribed. The space 
moved through by the foot in pacing may be appreciated 
solely through the muscles of the limb, as well as by the 
movements of the touching hand or the seeing eye. Whence 
Ave may accede to the assertion sometimes made, that the 
properties of space might be conceived, or felt, in the absence 
of an external world, or of any other matter than that com- 
posing the body of the percipient being ; for the body's own 
movements in empty space would suffice to make the very 
same impressions on the mind as the movements excited by 
outward objects. A perception of length, or height, or speed, 
is the mental impression, or state of consciousness, accompany- 
ing some mode of muscular movement, and this movement 
may be generated from within as well as from without ; in 
both cases the state of consciousness is exactly the same. 

We have thus gone over the three great classes of muscular 
feelings enumerated at the outset of the chapter. Other forms 
of muscular sensibility will arise in the course of our exposi- 
tion, through the combinations with other kinds of conscious- 
ness. We have not exhausted all that requires to be said on 
the sense of effort* accompanying muscular exercise, which 



* Sir William Hamilton, in his Dissertations on Reid, p. 864, has drawn 
a distinction between what he calls ' the locomotive faculty,' and the mus- 
cular sense, maintaining that the l'eeling of resistance, energy, power, is due 
to the first and not to the second. By this locomotive faculty he means 
the feeling of volitional effort, or of the amount of force given forth in a 
voluntary action; while he reduces the application of the term muscular 
sense, to the passive feeling that he supposes us to have of the state of 
tension of the muscle. 

His words are : ' It is impossible that the state of muscular feeling can 
enable us to be immediately cognizant of the existence and degree of a 
resisting force. On the contrary, supposing all muscular feeling abolished, 
the power of moving the muscles at will remaining, I hold that the con- 
sciousness of the mental motive energy, and of the greater or less intensity 



118 THE MUSCULAR FEELINGS. 

distinguishes the voluntary from the involuntary actions. I 
must likewise postpone the discussion of the feeliDgs of self- 
confidence and self-satisfaction, and of self generally, which 
manifest themselves in the course of active exertion. More- 
over, much yet remains to be said on the connexion of mus- 
cular sensibility with the processes of intelligence. 



of such energy requisite, in different circumstances, to accomplish our inten- 
tion, would of itself enable us always to perceive the fact, and in some degree 
to measure the amount, of any resistance to our voluntary movements : 
howbeit the concomitance of certain feelings with the different states of 
muscular tension, renders this cognition not only easier, but, in fact, obtrudes 
it on our attention.' 

The difficulty that I feel, with reference to this distinction, is to reco- 
gnise any muscular sense remaining after the feeling of expended energy is 
subtracted. I know of no fact that would suffice to substantiate Sir W. 
Hamilton's assumption, that we have a feeling of the state of tension of a 
muscle, independently of our feeling of motive power put forth. It may be 
quite true that sensitive nerve filaments are supplied to the muscles as well 
as motor filaments, and that through these we are affected by the organic 
condition of the tissue, as in the first class of feelings above described ; but 
it does not follow that we obtain by the same filaments a distinctive feeling 
of the degree of the muscle's contraction. 

The sense of expended energy I take to be the great characteristic of the 
muscular consciousness, distinguishing it from every mode of passive sensa- 
tion. By the discriminative feeling that we possess of the degree and con- 
tinuance of this energy, we recognise the difference between a greater and a 
less stretch of muscular tension, and no other sensibility seems to me to be 
called for in the case. 

I may here express the obligations we are under to Sir William 
Hamilton for his historical sketch of the doctrine of the Muscular Sense 
contained in the same note ; which is not the least valuable and in- 
teresting of his many contributions to the history of mental and metaphysical 
science. 



CHAPTER II 

OF SENSATION. 

BY Sensations we understand the mental impressions, feel- 
ings, or states of consciousness resulting from the action 
of external things on some part of the body, called on that 
account sensitive. Such are the feelings caused by tastes, or 
smells, sounds, or sights. These are the influences external 
to the mental organization ; they are distinguished from in- 
fluences originating within, as, for example, spontaneous 
activity, the remembrance of the past, or the anticipation of 
the future. 

The Sensations are classified according to the bodily organs 
concerned in their production ; hence the division into five 
senses. But along with distinctness of organ we have distinct- 
ness in the outward objects, and also in the inward conscious- 
ness. Thus objects of sight are different from objects of smell; 
or rather we should say, that the properties and the agency 
causing vision are different from the properties causing smell, 
taste, or hearing. 

The difference of the mental feeling or consciousness in 
the various senses is strongly marked, being a more character- 
istic and generic difference than obtains among the sensations 
of any one sense. We never confound a feeling of sight with 
a feeling of sound, a touch with a smell. These effects have 
the highest degree of distinctness that human feelings can 
possess. The discrimination of them is sure and perfect. 

We are commonly said to have five Senses, these being 
apparent to every observer : Sight by the eye, Hearing by the 
ear, Touch by the skin, Smell by the nose, Taste by the 
mouth. In addition to these, physiologists distinguish a sixth 
sense, of a more vague description, by the title of common or 
general sensibility, as will be seen in the following extract 






120 OF SENSATION. 

from Messrs. Todd and Bowman. ' Under the name of 
common or general sensibility may be included a variety of 
internal sensations, ministering for the most part to the organic 
functions and to the conservation of the body. Most parts of 
the frame have their several feelings of comfort and pleasure, 
of discomfort and pain. In many of the more deeply seated 
organs no strong sensation is ever excited, except in the form 
of pain, as a warning of an unnatural condition. The internal 
sensations of warmth and dullness, of hunger, thirst, and their 
opposites, of nausea, of repletion of the alimentary and genito- 
urinary organs, and of the relief succeeding their evacuation, 
of the privation of air, &c, with the bodily feelings attending 
strongly excited passions and emotions, may be mentioned 
among the principal varieties of common sensation/ 

In this enumeration we can see several distinct groups of 
feelings, and can refer them to distinct bodily organs. Hunger, 
thirst, their opposites, nausea, repletion, and evacuation of the 
alimentary tube, are all associated with the digestive system. 
They might therefore be termed the digestive sensations. 
The privation of air causes a feeling whose seat is the lungs, 
and is only one of many kinds of sensibility associated with 
respiration. The sensations of warmth and dullness connect 
themselves partly with the lungs and partly with the organic 
processes in general, more especially, perhaps, the circulation 
and the various secretions. The genito-urinary organs have a 
class of feelings so very special and peculiar, that they had 
better not be included under common sensibility. 

Looking at the very important classes of feelings here 
indicated, important at least as regards human happiness and 
misery, considering also that they are but a few examples 
chosen from a very wide field, it appears to me to be expedient 
to take them up in systematic detail, and for that purpose to 
provide a place for them among the Sensations. It is the 
business of a work like the present to review the entire range 
of human sensibility, in so far as this can be reduced to general 
or comprehensive heads ; and the only question is, where ought 
these organic feelings to be brought in ? I know of no better 
arrangement for them than to include them among the Sen- 




ORGANIC FEELINGS VIEWED AS SENSATIONS. 121 

sations. The only apparent objection is the want of outward 
objects corresponding to them in all cases. The feelings of 
comfort or discomfort arising from a circulation healthy or 
otherwise, are not sensations in the full meaning of the term ; 
they have no distinct external causes like the pleasures of 
music, or the revulsion of a bitter taste. But the reply to this 
objection is, first, that in many cases, if not in all, an external 
object can be assigned as the stimulus of the feeling : for 
example, in all the digestive feelings, the contact of the food 
with the surface of the alimentary canal is the true cause or 
object of the feeling. In like manner, the respiratory feelings 
may be viewed as sensations having the air for their outward 
object or antecedent. And with reference to the cases where 
feeling cannot be associated with any external contact, as in 
the acute pains of diseased parts, what we may plead is the 
strong analogy in other respects between such feelings and 
proper sensations. In all else, except the existence of an out- 
ward stimulus, the identity is complete. The seat of the feel- 
ing is a sensitive mass, which can be affected by irritants 
external to it, and which yields nearly the same effects in the 
case of a purely internal stimulus. So much is this the fact, 
that we are constantly comparing our inward feelings to sensa- 
tions • we talk of being oppressed, as with a heavy burden, of 
being cut, or torn, or crushed, or burned, under acute internal 
sensibility. Taking all these considerations together, I feel satis- 
fied of the propriety of the common view which classes these 
feelings with sensations. In carrying out this conviction, I 
shall place them first in the order of the Senses, under the 
title of Organic feelings, or Sensations of Organic Life. 

In the Senses as thus made up, it is useful to remark a 
division into two classes, according to their importance in the 
operations of the Intellect. If we examine the Sensations of 
Organic Life, Taste, and Smell, we shall find that as regards 
pleasure and pain, or in the Emotional point of view, they are 
of great consequence, but that they contribute very little of 
the permanent forms and imagery employed in our intellec- 
tual processes. This last function is mainly served by Touch, 
Hearing, and Sight, which may therefore be called the Intel- 



122 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

lectual Senses by pre-eminence. They are not, however, 
thereby prevented from serving the other function also, or 
from entering into the pleasures and pains of our emotional 
life. 

SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

1. The classification of these is best made to proceed 
according to the parts where they have their seat We have 
already alluded to the organic feelings connected with one 
tissue, the muscular ; we ought now to notice the other tissues 
entering into the moving apparatus, namely, the Bones and 
Ligaments. The nerves and nerve centres are subject to feel- 
ings dependent on their growth and waste, and on the changes 
that they go through in health and disease. The Circulation 
of the Blood, with the accompanying processes of secretion, 
assimilation, and absorption, may be presumed to have a 
distinct range of sensibility. The feelings connected with 
Respiration are of a less ambiguous character than the 
foregoing. The sensations of Digestion are numerous and 
prominent. 

2. I will pass over with very few remarks the Bones and 
Ligaments, whose sensibility would appear to be almost exclu- 
sively connected with injury or disease, appearing in that 
case under the form of acute pain, a form of sensibility that it 
will suffice to have dwelt upon once for all. The minute dis- 
crimination of forms of pain is highly serviceable to the 
physician, and, if susceptible of being accomplished with pre- 
cision, would enter with propriety into a systematic delineation 
of the Human Mind ; at present it will be sufficient to remark, 
that sensibility everywhere demands a distribution of nerve 
fibres, and that the bones and ligaments are supplied with 
these, and although not in great number, yet sufficient to 
agitate the nerve centres with overpowering intensity on par- 
ticular occasions. The diseases and lacerations of the perios- 
teum give birth to excessive pains. The ligaments are said 
to be insensible to the cut of a knife, while the feeling of 
their being wrenched is most acute and painful. In extreme 
fatigue, the ligaments and the tendons of the muscles would 



ORGANIC SENSATIONS OF NERVE. 123 

appear to act along with the muscular tissue in giving rise to 
the disagreeable feeling of the situation. The joints are noted 
on various occasions as the seat of pain. The diminution of 
atmospheric pressure consequent on ascending a great eleva- 
tion causes an intense sensation of weariness in the hip joints. 
Fracture of the bones and laceration of the ligaments are 
among the most agonizing misfortunes of our precarious 
existence. 

Organic Sensations of Nerve. 

3. The nerves and nerve centres, apart from their action 
as the organs or medium of all human sensibility, have a class 
of feelings arising from the organic condition of their own 
tissue. Wounds and diseases of the nerves are productive of 
intense pains, witness tic douleureux and the neuralgic affec- 
tions of the brain and spinal cord. Nervous exhaustion and 
fatigue produces a well known sensibility, very distressing in 
its extreme forms ; and repose, refreshment, and stimulants 
engender an opposite condition through a change wrought on 
the substance of the nerve tissue. 

The nervous pains arising from cuts, injuries, and disease 
of the substance are characterised by a most vehement inten- 
sity. It would appear that a conducting nerve fibre is never 
so powerfully agitated as when the irritation is directly applied 
to itself. When a muscle is spasmodically contracted, the in- 
fluence passes from the muscular fibre to the nerve, and the 
affection of the nervous fibres is then only secondary ; but in 
neuralgic affections the influence comes at first hand, and not 
by propagation from some other tissue. The pains of the 
nerves are of all degrees according to the irritating cause, but 
it is their nature to be more strongly felt than most other 
pains. 

4. Nervous fatigue and exhaustion when carried beyond 
a certain pitch is an extremely trying condition. It is pro- 
duced by excessive expenditure in one or other of the forms of 
nervous exercise ; by emotions, by over-much thought, or by 
too long continued activity of either body or mind. The effect 
is doubtless to modifv the nerve substance and its circulation, 



124 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

but in what precise way we cannot undertake to point out, 
The resulting sensation can be more readily described. The 
most painful aggravation of the state occurs when a morbid 
activity is generated beyond the control of the individual, 
hurrying him for a time into still greater depths of painful 
exhaustion. 

This state of mind merits a full and orderly delineation. 
Commencing as usual with the great characteristic distinction 
of pleasure and pain, we must attribute to it an exaggerated 
form of the latter. This pain is marked not by acuteness or 
intensity, but by massiveness or quantity. It is a wide spread 
and oppressive sensation, seeming to involve the entire nervous 
system. We are very strongly alive to it, a character probably 
belonging to all affections of the nerve substance. Its peculiar 
quality or tone cannot be seized by any descriptive phrase. I 
must appeal to each person's own experience for the percep- 
tion of it. The re-action of an intense excitement, the 
exhaustion of a severe loss or grievous mortification, will 
bring ud an instance of it to most minds. It will also be 
illustrated by contrast with the opposite state to be next 
treated of. The expression of the feeling is one of pain, not 
acute but deep seated and engrossing ; collapsed features, 
restlessness, fretting, and melancholy. The action suggested 
is usually something quite extravagant and misplaced : the 
getting rid of life itself is one of the most natural desires when 
the condition assumes its most virulent forms. This is a 
proof of the total loss of freshness and tone through the entire 
substance of the nervous system, the final triumph of ennui. 

I am aweary, aweary, God that I were dead. 

As regards intellectual marks and peculiarities, the condition 
is by no means one that has an intellectual persistence ; 
when it recurs in idea, there is apt to be something of the 
reality at bottom. The most obvious comparison that the state 
suggests is to excessive burden or toil in the moving organs. 

To fix by a precise delineation this condition of organic 
nervous exhaustion is an extremely important attempt, not- 
withstanding the difficulties arising both from the imperfection 



J 



FEELING OF FRESH AND HEALTHY NERVES. 125 

of our language and from the fluctuation and various nature 
of the condition itself. The importance lies in this great fact, 
that the state is the termination or final issue of a great many- 
other forms of pain. The struggle that we maintain against 
painful inflictions of all kinds, whether bodily or mental, preys 
at last on the substance of the nervous system, and produces 
as its result this new form of evil. Hence the common source 
of complaint with all classes of sufferers, — the weariness, the 
ennui, the heavy tread of time, the impatience, the impos- 
sibility of being effectually soothed or comforted. 

5. The consciousness arising out of the healthy and fresh 
condition of the nerve tissue, or out of the operations of the 
various artificial stimulants, is the exact contrast of the state 
now described. I do not enquire into the use and abuse of 
those stimulating materials, but merely advert to the effect 
common to them all, and for which they are had recourse to; 
an effect also to be reaped from the natural condition of the 
nervous organs when in their unexhausted vigour, as may be 
seen more particularly in early life. Emotions may likewise 
contribute to the same exaltation of the cerebral activity ; but 
we must endeavour to distinguish between the purely nervous 
condition and the influence exercised upon the nerves by the 
various sensations and emotions. I am here considering causes 
unquestionably physical or material, such as can have no 
other action but on the organic condition of the nerve fibres 
and centres. 

Following a parallel course of description, therefore, we 
may say of the state in question that the outward causes 
or antecedents are either healthy agents, or stimulants and 
drugs ; and that the change in the tissue is of a physical 
nature, but not capable of being otherwise specified. The 
consciousness itself, is pleasurable, massive, and strongly felt. 
The expression, as might be expected from an exalted nervous 
activity, is lively and animated, and of the cheerful and 
pleasurable cast. The action and desire that it prompts are 
for continuance unlimited, and the cast of thought is hopeful 
for the future. The intellectual persistence is, as in the other 
case, extremely low ; that is to say, the state is one difficult to 



126 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

be remembered or imagined when once entirely gone, and 
when either the opposite condition or some intermediate 
neutral one has taken the place of it. 

Organic Feelings of the Circulation and Nutrition. 

6. The circulation of the blood through the arteries and 
veins by the force of the heart, the secretion of nutritive 
material and of excrementitious matter in the several tissues 
and glands, and the various acts of absorption corresponding 
to those processes, — cannot be unattended with feeling. But 
the sensation arising out of the different degrees of vigour 
attending this course of operations is both vague and difficult 
to isolate. We may surmise with some probability that the 
depression of a low pulse and languid circulation has its seat 
in the capillaries situated all over the body, or is a sensation of 
the circulating machinery. To the same connexion we may 
assign the feelings of starvation when not reducible to the 
alimentary sensation of hunger. Thirst, also, is a feeling 
whose seat passes beyond the region of the stomach, and 
oppresses the entire system wherever the blood takes its course. 
The nerves distributed to the various tissues, muscular, glan- 
dular, mucous, &c, give note of the condition of those tissues 
as regards nutrition and the absorption of waste, in other 
words as regards the vigour of the blood's action in those 
parts. We may centralize all such indications, when they are 
general to the whole body, in the sufficiency of the composition 
and current of the blood. 

The feelings of inanition and thirst are the most specific of 
all those that we can refer to this great function ; feelings not 
so much of the acute character, as of pervading, massive, deep, 
and intolerable wretchedness. They are far more intense than 
mere nervous depression, and therefore stimulate a more 
vehement expression and a more energetic activity. Even 
when not rousing up the terror of death, they excite lively 
and furious passions. The unsophisticated brute is the best 
instance of their power. Like other organic states, they are 
not very easily realized after they are gone, but the fear, and 



FEELINGS OF CIRCULATION AND NUTRITION. 127 

stir, and energy that they produce at the time leaves a much 
more lasting impression than mere low spirits ; we take far 
greater precautions against them than against nervous depres- 
sion, which last is perhaps the least provided for of all human 
pains. 

The consciousness growing out of a vigorous circulation, 
with all that this implies, may be looked upon as the most 
characteristic sensation of pure animal existence. It is more 
continuous and persistent than good innervation, sound diges- 
tion, or than most of the other organic states. There is a 
thrill of corporeal gratification, not very acute, but of con- 
siderable volume, a gentle glow felt everywhere, rendering 
existence enjoyable, and disposing to serene and jDassive con- 
tentment. 

Let me have men about me that are fat; 
Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights. 

It seems to be through the circulation that we are sensi- 
tive to atmospheric changes, more particularly as regards 
moisture and dryness. It is found that in a dry atmosphere 
the capillary circulation is quickened, and in a moist atmo- 
sphere retarded. The influence of heat and cold tells more 
through the lungs, whose sensations are next to be considered. 

Feelings of Respiration. 

7. ' Respiration is that function by which an interchange 
of gases takes place between the interior of an organized being 
and the external medium ; and in the animal kingdom oxygen 
is the gas received, and carbonic acid the gas given out/ The 
aeration of the animal fluids or juices is an essential of their 
vitality ; if this is put an end to, death ensues instantaneously, 
if insufficiently performed, the vigour of the animal is lowered ; 
and a peculiar painful sensation experienced. In man and in 
air -breathing animals, there is a wind apparatus, the lungs, 
inflated and contracted by muscles so as to suck in and force 
out the air by turns. 

In this action we have all the particulars necessary to 
constitute a Sense : an external object, — the air of the atmo- 



128 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

sphere, — which operates by physical contact upon the lining 
membrane of the tubes and cells of the lungs; an organ of 
sense, and a resulting state of feeling, or consciousness. The 
peculiarity of the case lies in its being almost entirely an 
emotional sense ; generating feeling rather than yielding know- 
ledge, or providing forms for the intellect: ranking therefore 
among the lower, and not the higher, senses. 

As respects the object of this sense, the external air, it 
need only be remarked, that this differs considerably in its 
quality for breathing purposes, the chief point of difference 
being expressed by the term ' purity/ The purity is affected 
first by the loss of oxygen, which happens when the same air is 
repeatedly breathed, or otherwise consumed ; secondly, by the 
accumulation of carbonic acid, from the same circumstance: 
and, thirdly, by the presence of foreign gases and effluvia 
arising from animal life, vegetation, or other causes. Closeness 
or confinement is the chief aggravation of all those im- 
purities. Of the three evils, — the loss of oxygen, the accu- 
mulation of carbonic acid, and the generation of effluvia of 
animal and other substances, — the second is the least in- 
jurious; for although the production of a carbonic acid atmo- 
sphere, by burning charcoal in a close room, is fatal to life, 
yet the quantity ordinarily occurring in rooms is not found 
to do any harm if mixed with air otherwise pure. The loss 
of oxygen, and the diffusion of the gases of decay, are the 
main influences that deteriorate the atmosphere. 

Of the organ acted upon, the lungs, a minute description 
is not necessary for our present purpose. The structure is so 
arranged by ramifications and doublings as to present a 
very extensive surface to the air; the surface consisting of a 
thin membrane, with capillary blood-vessels, thickly distri- 
buted on its inner surface. The exchange of gases takes 
place through the double medium of membrane and capillary 
tube. The muscular apparatus for sustaining the bellows- 
action, is the diaphragm and abdominal muscles, and the 
muscles of the chest or ribs. The integrity and vigour of 
these muscles, and of the centres that sustain and time 






FEELINGS OF RESPIRATION. 129 

their action, must be reckoned as a condition of healthy- 
respiration. 

The feelings of Kespiration, both pleasurable and painful, 
are well marked. They include the gratification of pure air 
enhanced by the increased action due to muscular exercise; 
the various shades of oppression from over-crowded rooms 
and unwholesome gases, and the distressing experience of 
suffocation; besides the pains attendant on the many diseases 
of the lungs. 

8. The influence of pure and stimulating air abundantly 
inhaled, spreads far and wide over the system, elevating all 
the other functions by the improved quality imparted to the 
blood. The indirect consequences do not altogether hide 
the grateful sensibility arising from the lungs themselves, and 
referred by us to the region of the chest; a sensation not 
very acute or prominent, but possessing that choice and well 
known quality, expressed by the term ' freshness/ or ' refresh- 
ing.' This quality manifestly implies a contrast ; for it is most 
strongly felt when we pass from a lower to a higher degree of 
aeration. No technical nomenclature can increase the con- 
ception possessed by every one of this remarkable sensibility ; 
but for the sake of comparison with the other parts of our 
mental constitution, an attempt at verbal description is neces- 
sary. The main feature of the description turns upon the con- 
trast of the greater activity of the lungs with an immediately 
preceding activity of an inferior degree; and we derive here 
an example of a class of feelings not as yet dwelt upon in our 
exposition — the feelings of relief, — where the entire force of 
the sensibility rises out of the change from a state of pain or 
oppression to its opposite, or from a feeble to a powerful 
stimulus. It may be doubted whether much feeling resides 
in the lungs, after a given pace has been established for a 
length of time, but any acceleration of the rate of exchange 
of the two gases (by no means depending altogether on the 
rate of breathing) does for a time yield that delightful 
freshening sensation, which tells so immediately on the 
mental system as a contribution to our enjoyment, and a 

K 



ISO SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

stimulus to our activity and desire for rural recreation and 
bodily exercise. 

9. The feelings of insufficient and impure air are mani- 
fested in the forms of faintness, sense of exhaustion and 
weariness, and are doubtless due not to the lung-sense alone, 
but to the lowered condition of the body at large. The cha- 
racteristic sensibility of the lungs is manifested in the state 
termed suffocation, which will sometimes manifest itself 
clearly in the midst of a complex mass of other painful sen- 
sations. It is this state, therefore, that we must now parti- 
cularly allude to, as perhaps the true foundation of the fore- 
named sensibility of freshness, seeing that this last is a feeling 
of relief. Suffocation is felt in the absence of air, as in 
drowning, in an atmosphere deteriorated by poisonous gases, 
such as chlorine or sulphurous acid, in attacks of asthma, and 
in voluntarily holding in the breath. ' After holding the 
breath for fifteen or twenty seconds during ordinary respira- 
tion, or forty seconds after a deep respiration, there arises an 
insupportable sensation over the whole chest, concentrated 
under the sternum, and no effort can maintain the interrup- 
tion of the respiratory acts. This urgent sensation of want of 
breath when carried to its full extent by any mechanical im- 
pediment to the aeration of the blood is one of the most 
painful and oppressive kind, and is referable to the pulmonary 
plexuses (of nerves) distributed to the bronchia, and perhaps 
on the walls of the lobular passages and cells. The impression 
made on these peripheral nerves by the absence of oxygen, 
and the undue presence of carbonic acid in the air in contact 
with them, is propagated to the spinal cord and medulla 
oblongata by the sympathetic and vagus, and there excites 
those combined actions of the muscles of inspiration which 
lead to the renewal of the air/* This sensation, so painful, 
intense, and keen, is aggravated, in the extreme cases, by the 
circumstance of growing worse every moment until relief or 
rupture ensue. It may rank as the most unendurable of all 



* Todd and Bowman, ii. 403. 



SENSATION OF COLD. 131 

human sensations ; while the fact that causes it, is the most 
dangerous to human life of any that can occur. The pain- 
fulness of the sensation would suffice to set on a train of 
voluntary actions, and to prompt the most urgent desires for 
relief; but this is not entirely left to the will, for the reflex 
nervous system is powerfully called into play on the occasion. 
This reflex action consists, as above stated, in an increased 
stimulus of the respiratory muscles ; which however is not in 
all cases the thing demanded. When the suffocation arises 
from some pungent odour, the reflex stimulus is a mistake, 
and we must overpower it by the voluntary effort of holding 
the breath for a time, till we have got out of reach of the 
mischief. In the suffocation of a crowded room, the increased 
action is appropriate : like the accelerated breathing of con- 
sumptive patients, this compensates for the small quantity of 
oxygen gained by a single breath. 

10. The present appears to me not an inappropriate place 
for bringing in the important feelings of Cold and Heat, 
whose description is not to be omitted among our Sensations. 
Under the sense of Touch, these feelings have to be adverted 
to as a certain class of sensations of contact with the skin; 
here we propose to deal with them as affecting the body 
throughout. 

To commence with Gold. The outward cause of this 
feeling is some influence tending to lower the temperature of 
the body. The natural heat of the blood is about 98 , and 
any contact below this point feels cold : any contact above it 
feels warm. There is a certain surplus heat generated in the 
human system, which enables us to live in a medium below 
9 8°, without feeling cold, and if this heat be husbanded by 
clothing, a very great depression of external temperature 
may be endured. A room is warm at 6o°. The outer air 
can be endured at freezing and far below, either by means of 
exercise, which evolves heat, or of clothing, which retains it. 

An acute cold acts like a cut or a bruise, injuring the part 
affected, and producing intensely painful sensations of the 
same class as arise from violent local injuries. The tempe- 

K 2 



132 SENSATIONS OF OEGANIC LIFE. 

rature of freezing mercury would destroy the skin, like boiling 
water, or a sharp cut. This case needs not any special dis- 
cussion at the present stage. 

The proper sensation of Cold arises from a general cooling 
of the body, or any considerable part of it, below the point 
suitable to healthy action. The term ' chillness/ expresses the 
fact precisely. How this cooling operates upon the various 
tissues, upon the circulation, and the different nutritive func- 
tions, I am not distinctly informed. We may safely infer, 
that the vital activities are impaired by it in some way or 
other — that it makes the blood to stagnate, suspends or 
vitiates the secretions, lowers the tone of the nerves — in short, 
deranges the organic processes, like disease or insufficient 
nutriment. No doubt the mode of derangement is something 
distinct, for I scarcely know any other action that can imitate 
the sensation of chillness, although such there may be, just as 
there are derangements that appear to imitate the effects of 
too great heat. 

The feeling or sensation of chillness has a well-marked 
character, and a generical distinctness. It is as a general rule 
of the painful class, being not acute but massive and powerful, 
and strongly felt. Our body appears as if very raw and 
sensitive in the matter of temperature. The feeling of cold 
engrosses the sensibility of the frame ; we find a difficulty in 
keeping the attention upon anything else. It has not the 
unendurable character of acute pains, nor the terrible in- 
fluence of suffocation; nor can it rank with nervous depression 
unless intense enough to produce that special effect. But it 
can neutralise many pleasures; neither rest in fatigue, nor 
food in hunger, can satisfy a frame very much chilled with 
cold. The imagination can scarcely picture any satisfying 
scenes of enjoyment; the entire world seems comfortless. The 
expression of cold is chiefly the physical action of shivering, 
arising from its influence on the nerves; occasionally, too, 
there is hysteric laugh ; beyond these there is nothing specific 
or different from the other forms of depression. The activity 
suggested is of course to get warm by some means or other; 
but the influence of the state is often paralysing to exertion. 



SENSATION OF HEAT. 133 

In regard to the permanence of the impression, or the power 
of reviving in idea a state of depressing chill, although like 
all the other organic sensations, it is difficult to realize when 
not felt, yet the abiding impression is quite sufficient to induce 
constant and extensive precautions against this disagreeable 
condition. I have said above, that there are pains that are 
very much neglected when once gone, and I gave the case of 
nervous exhaustion as an example ; but this is by no means 
true of cold. Of all the disagreeables hitherto treated of, this 
one seems to me to rank very high in the estimate of precau- 
tionary prudence, which is the strongest proof either of its 
endurance as an idea, or of its reality being always so close 
upon us as never to be long out of mind. 

There is a secondary action of chillness, which alters con- 
siderably the character of its sensation. Cold is a stimulant of 
nervous action, and provokes an increased activity of the lungs 
and the circulation ; also inducing bodily and mental exertion. 
When not too great, the stimulus is a wholesome and invigor- 
ating one, and heightens the powers of life, and all the 
sensations of energy and vitality. Hence the influence of 
cold air, cold climates, and cold water in sustaining the tone 
of the human constitution. The sensation of cold is not 
altered, but other states are induced which cause it to be no 
longer an object of revulsion and dread. 

11. The consequences of Heat are in nearly every parti- 
cular exactly the opposite of those now stated. Acute or 
intense heats agree with intense colds in being simply 
destructive and painful. Within the point of injury to the 
tissues, heat is a pleasurable sensation. The pleasure of heat, 
like the pain of cold, is both massive and keen. There is, 
however, a noticeable distinction of cases, some distinguished 
by intensity, and others by quantity ; indeed, this distinction 
of quantity and intensity, used all through this work as a part 
of the description of conscious states, has its perfect type in 
the case of temperature, there being a physical reality corre- 
sponding to the mental fact. Sometimes we have great inten- 
sity and small quantity, as in the scorching rays of a fire, or a 
cup of hot tea : at other times we have large quantity with low 



134 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

intensity, as in a hot bath, a warm room, a warm bed. The 
hot bath is the extreme instance. By no other contrivance 
can such a mass of heat be brought to bear upon the human 
system ; consequently this presents the sensation of warmth 
in its most luxuriant form ; a sensation cherished with intense 
avidity while it lasts, and surrendered with great reluctance. 
It is the intoxication of animal heat. We are unavoidably led 
to assume that this warmth must act in a very direct way upon 
the nerves ; for it is not to be supposed that the organic pro- 
cesses are so very much furthered by the sustained temperature 
as to exalt the pleasurable consciousness to so remarkable a 
degree. I prefer rather to assume that both the cold shiver 
and the warm glow are due in a great measure to a direct 
influence of temperature on the substance of the nerves ; 
although, as above remarked, there can be no doubt of the 
deranging influence of cold upon organic life. Nevertheless, 
we may derange the system by excessive heat, without pro- 
ducing the painful feeling arising from cold ; the instances of 
scorching fires, hot liquors, and a burning sun will satisfy most 
people on this head. 

As cold increases the action of the lungs and the circula- 
tion, so warmth enfeebles both ; and hence, with all its 
pleasurableness, makes the body less disposed to action, as is 
seen in summer heat and in tropical climates. This effect, 
however, is not without a good side ; for in the case of morbid 
activity of the nervous system, warmth is a soothing influence, 
either by its physical effects, or by the nature of the sensation, 
which, like repose, is eminently satisfying and anti-volitional, 
or from the physical and mental effects combined. 

Sensations of the Alimentary Canal. 

12. Digestion offers all the conditions of a sense. There is 
an external object, — the Food ; a distinct organ of sense, — the 
Alimentary Canal and its appendages ; and a set of Feelings 
arising from the contact, also distinct and specific. To treat 
these feelings under Taste is to confound together two senses 
totally different in their character, although happening to have 
one common object or stimulant. 



OBJECTS OF THE ALIMENTARY SENSE. 135 

13. The objects of this sense are the materials taken into 
the body as food and drink. These materials are extremely 
various, but there is no corresponding variety in their action 
on the stomach. They can be reduced to a few general heads, 
according to their composition, it being found possible to 
assign a few leading substances which comprehend all the 
different sorts of material serviceable in nourishing the body. 
The following is an abstract of this classification : — 

1st. Water and the water}' liquids, including the substances 
conveyed in solution, or suspension, in water. 

2nd. Saccharine substances, derived from the vegetable 
kingdom. This comprehends sugars, starch, gums, vinegar. 

3rd. Oily substances. These include the various fats and 
oils, as well as alcohol. Like the former group, they are com- 
posed of carbon and the elements of water, but in them the 
carbon is in a much higher proportion. 

4th. Albuminous substances, containing nitrogen : fibrine, 
gelatine, albumen, caseine (matter of cheese), vegetable gluten, 
' all the materials which make up this group are derived 
generally from the animal kingdom, with the exception of the 
last, which is contained in great abundance in wheat ; similar 
if not identical, principles exist in other vegetables. Wheat, 
indeed, consists of two substances — one referable to the 
saccharine group, the other to the albuminous, the former 
consisting of starch, the latter of gluten/ 

Milk is found to contain matter of all the four classes : 
water, sugar, oily matters (butter), caseine. 

The three first classes are incapable of nourishing the 
principal animal tissues, such as nerve, muscle, &c. They are 
fitted rather for supplying fat, bile, and matters used in the 
production of the carbonic acid that escapes from the lungs. 
They are chiefly destined for the creation of animal heat, 
which in the main seems to arise from the conversion of 
carbon into carbonic acid. The fourth class, or the albuminous 
substances, are the proper elements of nourishment, having a 
composition fitting them for that purpose. — Todd and Bowman, 

The differences that exist among the infinity of articles 



136 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

used as food are not at bottom so great as they seem. If we 
take the different species of grain, — wheat, barley, rye, oats, 
rice, maize, millet, we shall find they are all composed of the 
same ultimate materials, gluten and starch, though not in the 
same proportions. In like manner the potato is a starchy 
vegetable, with a very small share of gluten, hence the defec- 
tive character of it as an article of nourishment. Another 
difference among vegetables relates to their texture, as fitting 
them for being acted on during mastication and digestion, — a 
circumstance, however, which cooking can modify. Thus the 
potato is a much looser texture than grain. A third point of 
distinction among alimentary substances is the extraneous 
essences that may enter into them and affect the sense of taste 
and the general relish, as in the difference between mutton 
and beef, chicken and venison, brandy and rum. Such ele- 
ments belong more to Taste than to Digestion, although this 
last function may be influenced by extraneous additions, as 
mustard and spices. 

14. I extract from Quain's Anatomy the following general 
view of the Organs of Digestion. 

'The digestive apparatus includes that portion of the 
organs of assimilation, within which the food is received and 
partially converted into chyle, and from which, after the chyle 
has been absorbed, the residue, or excrement, is expelled. It 
consists of a main or primary part named the alimentary 
canal, and of certain accessory organs. 

' The alimentary canal is a long membranous tube, com- 
mencing at the mouth and terminating at the anus, composed 
of certain tunics or coats, and lined by a continuous mucous 
membrane from one end to the other. Its average length is 
about thirty feet, being about five or six times the length of 
the body. The upper part of it is placed beneath the base of 
the skull, the succeeding portion is situated within the thorax, 
and the remainder is contained within the cavity of the 
abdomen. In these several situations, its form, dimensions, 
and connexions, its structure and functions, are so modified, 
that certain natural divisions of it, bearing different names, 
have been recognised by anatomists. 



ORGANS AND PROCESSES OF DIGESTION. 137 

' It may he considered as composed of two parts ; one 
situated above the diaphragm, and the other below that mus- 
cular partition, and therefore within the abdomen. The first 
division consists of the organs of mastication, insalivation, and 
deglutition ; and comprises the mouth, the pharynx, and the 
oesophagus, or gullet. The second division consists of the 
organs of digestion, properly so called, and of those of defse- 
cation ; viz., the stomach, the small intestine, and the great 
intestine. 

' The accessory parts are chiefly glandular organs, which 
pour their secretions into it at different points. They consist 
of the salivary glands (named the parotid, submaxillary, 
and sublingual), the liver, and the pancreas. Besides these 
large glandular organs, a multitude of small glands, compound, 
follicular, or tubular, are collected together at certain points, 
or scattered over large portions of the inner surface of the 
alimentary canal : these are described along with the mucous 
membrane of each part. The remaining accessory organs are 
the teeth, the jatcs, the tongue, and the spleen.' — p. 965. 

15. The physiology of digestion must be very briefly stated 
here. The first stage is mastication, which serves the double 
purpose of breaking down the food and mixing it with saliva; 
the function of the saliva is now known to be to convert the 
starch into grape sugar by a process of the nature of fermenta- 
tion. The effort of mastication is purely voluntary, but when 
the food gets upon the back part of the tongue it is passed into 
the bag of the pharynx, and propelled down the gullet into the 
stomach by involuntary muscular contractions. In the stomach 
it is exposed to the action of the gastric juice. This peculiar 
action is not as yet fully understood, but so far as the researches 
of physiologists have yet gone, the most reasonable conclusion 
is, that ' in man and the carnivora the fluid secreted by the 
stomach during digestion simply dissolves animal and vegetable 
substances of the azotized kind, so as to render them capable 
of absorption, without materially altering their chemical con- 
stitution, leaving starchy, oily, saccharine, and the allied 
substances but little or not at all acted on.' The matter that 
leaves the stomach to pass into the intestines, is known by the 



138 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

name of cltyme. This is very soon mixed up with two other 
secretions, the pancreatic juice and the bile from the liver. 
In the stomach and along the intestine there is an absorption 
going on, by two different ways. The one is by the lacteal 
vessels : these have the exclusive power of taking up the fatty 
matters, which constitutes the chief part of the chyle, as their 
contents are named. The other is by the capillary blood 
vessels, by whose means the nutritive matter is taken at once 
into the circulation, but before reaching the heart it passes 
through the liver. The use of the pancreatic juice, which is 
poured into the intestine near its commencement, is to co- 
operate with the salivary glands in dealing with the starchy 
constituents of the food, and to contribute probably along with 
other fluids to the digestion of the fat. The functions of the 
liver are more complex and obscure. The bile appears to aid 
in the digestion of the alimentary matters ; its abundant 
hydro-carbonous ingredients are in great part absorbed in its 
passage along the intestine, while other constituents are finally 
discharged as excrementitial. The liver is further believed to 
form sugar and fat out of other elements passing into it by 
the circulation. In coursing through the intestine by the 
successive contractions of the tube, the material is lessened by 
absorption into the lacteals and blood vessels ; at the same 
time it gathers new matter by secretion from the coats of the 
intestines, which matter is of the impure kind, and is destined 
to pass out of the system along with the husk and undigested 
remainder of the food. The extremity of the great intestine 
is called the rectum, and on it are brought to bear the muscles 
of final expulsion. 

It is important to be remarked before passing to the con- 
sideration of the states of consciousness allied with digestion, 
that only the upper and lower ends of the alimentary canal 
are supplied with cerebro-spinal nerves. The vagus nerve is 
largely distributed to the stomach, and nerves from the same 
system to the rectum, but the intestine receives its supply 
from the sympathetic system. This corresponds with our 
experience of alimentary sensations, which are concentrated 
chiefly in the two extremities of the canal, while the inter- 






SENSATIONS OF DIGESTION. 139 

veiling thirty feet of intestine is almost entirely without sensa- 
tion in ordinary circumstances. The movements of the in- 
testine are kept up by means of the sympathetic system of 
nerves. 

16. And now with regard to the Feelings of Alimentary 
action. These are of the pleasurable kind when the action is 
healthy ; disease and disorder bring on a countless multitude 
of pains. 

Discussing first the sensation of taking food, we shall find 
a pretty general agreement as to its character. I do not 
speak of the feeling of Taste, but of the sensibility connected 
more particularly with the stomach, and which extends even 
to the mouth in connexion with salivation, and is spoken of as 
the relish. If we include the entire mass of sensation arising 
from a healthy meal, and lasting a certain time after the meal 
is finished, at which stage the operation of digestion in the 
stomach is the sole cause of what we feel, we may safely pro- 
nounce it to be an agreeable state of a high order. It has in 
a high degree the characteristic of massiveness, or amount, 
being a rich, luxuriant, satisfying sensation. If we were to 
assign the precise and specific quality assumed by it after the 
first edge of appetite is over, we should compare it to the 
sensation of genial warmth, which it appears very closely to 
resemble, a feeling still more enhanced by the addition of 
alcoholic stimulants to the food. There is manifestly a great 
similarity of effect on the nervous system by the three very 
different actions — of warmth, the digestion of food, and alcohol. 
Such is the character common to all kinds of healthy nourish- 
ment ; but there is the greatest possible difference in the 
qualities of food as regards stomach relish ; from turtle to 
stale oat-cakes, or a piece of black bread, what a mighty 
interval ! We cannot pretend to assign the difference of 
digestive action that corresponds to such unequal degrees of 
sensation. To the richer kinds of food belong a feeling in- 
tense and keen as well as voluminous, warm, and engrossing. 
The magnitude of the sensation is attested by its power to 
submerge a great many irritations, and make itself for the 
time the ruling element of the consciousness. This power 



140 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

belongs only to the more massive kinds of sensation, such as 
healthy exercise and repose, nervous elation, or the intoxica- 
tion of warmth. 

The Expression of this state is one of complacent satisfac- 
tion without much vehemence. In taking food, the move- 
ments are absorbed in the act, and in sympathy with the parts 
concerned ; afterwards there supervenes a passive tone and 
disposition. 

The energy of Volition generated corresponds to the relish 
and to the stage of the operation. At first the stimulus to 
action is intense and even furious. Appetite is only inflamed 
by partial gratification ; and until such time as the stage of 
fulness draws near, the pleasure only shows itself in supply- 
ing impulse to continue it. Eating is among the most cha- 
racteristic examples of the general law of Feeling-prompted 
Action that we can produce, being not only for the avoidance 
of pain, but also for the glutting of a pleasurable sensation. 
There is thus in a single round of digestive feeling a volitional 
commencement and a serene termination, the one graduating 
into the other. 

To complete the delineation of this mode of consciousness, 
we may notice the peculiarity of it as related to the Intellect. 
In doing this, however, we have only to repeat what has been 
said on most of the feelings hitherto discussed, that there is 
comparatively little permanence in idea when the state of the 
organs is such as to forbid the reality. But this statement we 
must also qualify with the remark made above on heat, that 
the reality is one that can never be long absent. As a general 
rule, it is true of digestive and all other organic sensations, 
that they are exceedingly powerful when present, and exceed- 
ingly little realized when absent. They are very unlike sights 
and sounds, loves and hatreds, and other states that the intel- 
lect can retain in the ideal form ; to imagine with effect the 
relish of a feast when under nausea passes the power of the 
most vigorous mind. 

The sensation connected with the lower extremity of the 
canal is chiefly of the nature of a feeling of relief. 

Another important healthy sensation of the alimentary 



HUNGER — NAUSEA — DISGUST. 141 

canal is Hanger, the state preceding in order the one just 
described. The cause and seat of hunger are doubtless in the 
stomach, but on what particular condition of the stomach is 
yet uncertain. The feeling itself is of the uneasy painful 
class, with a degree of massiveness and engrossment corre- 
sponding to stomachic feelings in general. It may have all 
degrees of intensity, but assuming some average condition to 
start from, we may fairly speak of it as a sensation both 
powerful and keen. We can distinguish it from the sense of 
lassitude and faintness arising from want of nourishment to 
the tissues, a sense that may often be mixed up with it. 
Hunger, like other painful feelings, provokes to action for its 
appeasement, the strength of the impulse being the measure 
of its absolute force in the region of volition. Not being so 
acute or intense as a cut, a cramp, or a burn, it does not 
stimulate an instant and violent proceeding ; but the influence 
on the entire consciousness of the individual is great and com- 
manding, and the voluntary effort thence arising is of the 
most resolute kind. To satisfy hunger and impart stomachic 
relish, is one of the constant aims of human activity. 

1 7. These are the chief alimentary feelings of the healthy 
kind. Among those caused by derangement, we can only 
select some of the most conspicuous and characteristic in- 
stances. The feeling of Nausea and Disgust is an effect 
indicating some great disturbance in the usual course of 
digestive operations. This state is associated with the act of 
vomiting, an act that may take place, ' 1. from the intro- 
duction of certain substances into the stomach, some of which, 
as bile, mustard, common salt, not becoming absorbed, must 
act simply by the impression they make on the mucous mem- 
brane ; 2. By the introduction of emetics, as Tartar emetic, 
into the blood, or by the presence of certain morbid poisons 
in that fluid ; 3. By mental emotion, as that excited by the 
sight of a disgusting object ; 4. By irritation at the base of 
the brain/ — Todd and Bowman, ii. p. 214. To these must 
be added sea-sickness. The act of vomiting is the result of a 
reflex stimulus directed towards the muscles that compress 
the abdomen in the act of expiration of the breath. These 



142 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

muscles violently contracting while the exit of the air from 
the lungs is shut up, squeeze the contents of the stomach 
upwards towards the mouth. The sensation of vomiting is in 
most cases horrible in the extreme. It proves by a strong 
instance the power of stomachic influences on the nervous 
system. The sensation is one sui generis — no other feeling 
can at all compare with it. There are many forms of un- 
endurable pain, but this has a virulence of its own, being 
both great in amount and intense in degree. Its connexion 
with the stomach gives it the peculiarity of destroying the 
appetite and relish for food, and of subverting nutrition at the 
fountain head. It manifestly extends its influence to the 
nervous system, and makes the nervous tissue itself the seat 
of intense depressing sensation. The activity of the body is 
for the time destroyed, the muscular system being utterly 
relaxed. There is a strong revulsive stimulus operating within 
an exhausted frame ; a fact that, whenever it occurs, must 
needs exaggerate the misery of the sufferer. 

The feelings of nausea and disgust, and the objects causing 
them, are expressed in our language by a variety of strong 
terms. The 'disagreeable' is originally what revolts the 
stomach, extended in its application to other forms of the 
unpleasing. ' Disgust ' is the extreme opposite of relish. The 
fact that these words are among the strongest that the lan- 
guage affords to express dislike or aversion, proves how deep 
and intense is the feeling that they primarily refer to. 

Besides the objects that produce disgust by actual contact 
with the alimentary canal, there are substances whose appear- 
ance to the eye is disgusting. Certain gases also affect the 
smell in the same way. Disgusting sights are mostly the result 
of association ; but some nauseous smells act from the very 
beginning. The arrangements of human life, particularly 
address themselves to our protection against disgusts ; and 
singularly enough, the chief things to be avoided are the pro- 
ducts of living bodies themselves. This is the foremost aim 
of the operations of cleansing and the removal of refuse. The 
influences that stimulate a healthy digestion and relish are 






PAINS OF D1SOEDERED DIGESTION. 143 

contrasted with the opposite by the term 'fresh/ which we 
spoke of already as a quality of respiration, but which has still 
more emphasis as opposed to the causes of disgust. The 
power of resisting nauseating influences is an indication of 
great stomachic vigour in the right direction. 

There are many things entering into the ugly or opposed 
to the beautiful ; but nothing contrasts with beauty so entirely, 
or annihilates it so effectually, as a disgust. 

1 8. The foregoing cases are intended to include the most 
prominent of our habitual and ordinary experiences in relation 
to the alimentary processes. With regard to the feelings 
arising from disease in the various organs of digestion, these 
are so many forms and varieties of pain. If we were to go 
systematically through the entire series of organs enumerated 
above, we should have to commence with mastication, and 
describe the pains and agonies which the teeth render familiar 
to us. The pain of toothache, its peculiar intensity and viru- 
lence, would appear to have some relation to the proximity of 
the parts to the nerve centres ; any irritation about the face or 
head seems, so far as I can judge, to carry a greater amount 
of excitement to the brain than a similar irritation in more 
distant parts would give birth to. Distemper of the salivary 
glands yields a sensibility, not of the acute kind, but annoying, 
and difficult to bear, like disordered secretions in general. 
The pains and disorders of the early stages of digestion, that 
is in the stomach where the sensitiveness is greatest, are very 
numerous, and are sometimes acute and oftener not so. In 
proportion to the genial influence of a healthy digestion upon 
the general mass of sensibility, is the malign influence of an 
unhealthy digestive action. It is in extreme cases altogether 
overpowering, and renders futile almost every attempt to 
establish a pleasurable tone by other causes. The nervous 
connexion between the brain and the stomach is extremely 
intimate and powerful ; and shows itself in many aspects. 
Not only is there a keen sensibility to stomachic states, but 
also a strong returning influence from the brain upon the 
digestive secretions in the way of supplementing their force, 



144 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

or giving them a stimulus from without.* This partial de- 
pendence of stomachic vigour upon a derived power from the 
cerebral mass is well attested by the tendency of an over- 
worked brain to bring on disordered digestion — an effect that 
does not seem to arise so readily in other parts, as the muscles 
or the lungs. On this point, however, we must make allow- 
ance for differences of temperament. The stomachic sensi- 
bility will be found very unequal in different individuals, just 
as we find inequalities in the feeling of music, or any other 
sense. Some persons count the feelings of digestion a very 
small item among the sources of pleasurable excitement ; but 
I am led to suppose from the prevailing attention to the 
choice and preparation of food, that for the great majority of 
people I have not overstated their importance. 

On acute stomachic pains it is not necessary to spend 
much discussion. They have their character chiefly from the 
great sensibility of the alimentary surface, which often makes 
a slight cause of irritation peculiarly keen and intolerable. 
They are not so violent as lacerations, burns, and broken 
bones, nor so intense as cramps, nor so fearfully oppressive as 
suffocation, but for the moment they are sharp and agonizing. 
On the subject of pains and distempers not acute, but con- 
nected with want of tone and vigour in the digestive system, 
or with deranged mucous surface, the pathologist and physician 
have much to describe. The stomach, intestines, liver, &c, 
have each their various modes of distemper. But what chiefly 
interests us is to mark, as a specific mental experience arising 
out of many forms of alimentary derangement, the depression 
and ennui spread over the consciousness at the times when any 
of these organs are failing to perform their part. This effect 
is one that, if not intense or acute, is powerful in its amount, 
and extremely difficult to combat either by other stimulants 
or by the action of the mind recalling or imagining situations 
of a less gloomy cast. It either resembles or else produces, that 



* Wagner states (Elements of Physiology, §362), that 'Increased 
movements of the intestines have been observed when the corpora quadri- 
gemina have been irritated.' 






FEELINGS OF ELECTRICAL STATES. 145 

physical depression of the nervous substance already consi- 
dered; the likeness holds remarkably in the leading features, 
as in the distaste for existence while the state lasts, and the 
extreme facility of forgetting it when it is gone. In the rational 
point of view hardly any sacrifice is too much to prevent the 
frequent recurrence of this state, but so little hold does it take 
as a permanent impression, that the reason has very little 
power in the matter. Any feeling of general depression is 
easily forgotten when the animal spirits have returned ; the 
evil theu seems to have neither a local habitation nor a name. 
We have now gone through the principal states of feeling 
that enter into the general fact of physical Comfort or Dis- 
comfort. The most powerful constituent elements of these two 
opposite modes of existence are the feelings of the muscular 
system as regards health, exercise, and repose, and the various 
classes of organic sensations above enumerated. 

Feelings of Electrical States. 

19. We shall touch upon only one other class of feelings 
before passing from this subject, the feelings of Electric and 
Magnetic agencies. It is very difficult to say anything precise 
on this class of sensations, but their interest is such that we 
ought not to pass them unnoticed. 

The electric shock from a Ley den jar is perhaps the 
simplest of all the electric effects ; yet we are not able to de- 
scribe the change that it produces on the tissues affected by it. 
When very severe it destroys life. The stroke of lightning is 
proved to be of the same nature. The peculiar feeling of this 
kind of electricity has its main character from the suddenness 
of the action ; the painful effect is described as a shock or a 
blow. When pretty smart it leaves an unpleasant impression 
behind, such as to render us averse to a repetition of the 
experiment. There can be no doubt of the disorganising 
tendency of the influence when at all severe, and the impres- 
sion is one that remains with us as a thing of dread, like a 
scald or the blow of a weapon. The Voltaic shock is very 
different, in consequence of the altered character of the dis- 
charge ; an incessant current is substituted for an instantaneous 



146 SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 

shock. Still the painful character remains. The first contact 
causes a slight blow like the other, then succeeds a feeling of 
heat, and a creeping sensation of the flesh as if it were un- 
naturally wrenched or torn, which after a time becomes 
intolerable. The peculiar distorting sensation is carried to 
the utmost in Faraday's Magneto-Electric Machine, where 
the current instead of continuing of one character is changed 
from negative to positive and from positive to negative a 
great many times every second. The sense of contortion from 
this machine may be described as agonising. Feebler dis- 
charges of this kind are employed as an electric stimulus in 
certain diseases. There seems to be a power in electricity to 
revive the action of torpid nerves, and after trying both 
common and voltaic electricity, for the purpose, Faraday's 
invention has been adopted in preference to either. 

20. The electricity of the Atmosphere is believed to be 
the cause of quite other sensations than the shock of the 
thunderbolt. In some states, this influence is supposed to 
kindle a general glow in the human frame, while in other 
states the effect is painful and depressing. Many persons 
complain of a disturbed, irritated condition of body on the eve 
of a thunder-storm. The highly electrified state of the atmo- 
sphere in dry cold is generally considered as bracing ; while 
part of the depression of moist sultry weather is attributed to 
the absence of electricity.* Much, however, remains to be 
proved in regard to these popular beliefs. The time of 
greatest influence on the human sensibility from this class of 
influences is the eve of an earthquake or volcanic eruption ; 
in which case it is known that the earth's magnetism suffers 
violent disturbances. On these occasions feelings of depres- 
sion amounting to nausea and sickness overtake both men 
and animals, as if some great stimulus of a supporting kind 
were suddenly withdrawn. 



* I am informed as the result of the observations at Kew Observatory, 
(adopted at the instance of the British Association for observing atmospheric 
electrical states), that the electricity of the air is always in proportion to the 



degree of cold. 



SUBSTANCES ACTING ON THE SENSE OF TASTE. 147 

21. The influence of magnetism has been applied to 
produce new and artificial sensations in such experiments as 
those of Baron Reichenbach ; but as the same sensations 
have been caused by crystals, heat, light, chemical activity, 
and the living hand, they can hardly be assigned specifically 
to the magnetic action. Reichenbach records two different 
classes of feelings arising in his patients, according to 
the polar direction of the agent, the one cool, refreshing, 
delightful ; the other in all respects the opposite.* 

The action of the human hand and the stare of the eye 
are employed in the process of mesmerism, which has now 
come to be used as a source of sensation and a cure of 
disease. Being a soporific influence there is in the action 
also the included quality of soothing the nervous system 
under pain and irritation, and thus of inducing again the 
more healthy texture of the nervous substance. 

SENSE OF TASTE. 

This is a peculiar sense attached to the entrance of the 
alimentary canal, as an additional help in discriminating 
what is proper to be taken as food, and an additional source 
of enjoyment in connexion with the first reception of 
the nutritive material. 

i. The substances used as food are more completely 
distinguished by the taste than by the digestion. The tastes 
of bodies are almost as widely different as is their chemical 
composition ; but in order to have a taste, a substance must 
be either liquid or soluble in the mouth. 

The bodies acting on the sense of Taste are innumerable. 
They are found in the mineral, vegetable, and animal 
kingdoms, and are distinguished from one another by means 
of this property. 

* I may remark, however, that although Reichenbach's experiments 
have been performed with an amount of care unknown before in this class 
of subjects, and rivalling the most approved scientific researches, yet it is 
still a doubt with many whether these effects be not due to imagination, 
Mr. Braid's admirable observations on the influence of ideas in producing 
bodily states show to what great lengths the power of imagination may go 
in a peculiar class of temperaments. — See his criticism on Reichenbach, and 
writings generally. 

l2 



148 SENSE OF TASTE. 

Of mineral bodies, water and the elements of atmospheric 
air are remarkable for having no taste. But most other 
liquids and gases, and a very great proportion of solid sub- 
stances, if capable of being dissolved by the saliva, have a 
distinct action on the palate. All acids, all alkalies, and 
nearly all soluble salts are sapid. 

It is remarked that in salts the taste is determined more 
by the base than by the acid. Thus salts of iron have 
in general the inky taste ; salts of magnesia partake more or 
less of the well known character of Epsom salts. There is 
also something of a common character in the salts of silver, 
of soda, of potash, of ammonia. 

It is a curious fact, that the chemical combination M 2 O 3 , 
or two atoms of a metal with three of oxygen (termed also 
sesquioxides) causes sweetness. Alumina is an illustration; 
for alum is known to be sweet as well as astringent. The 
oxide of chromium is still sweeter. Glucina is the sweetest of 
all, and has its name from this quality. 

The salt of silver, termed hypo-sulphite, and its com- 
binations with hypo-sulphites of the alkalies, are the sweetest 
bodies known. 

The salts of lime are bitter. 

The organic alkalies are all intensely bitter; quinine, 
morphine, strychnine, are instances. The taste of strychnine 
is apparent when diluted with water, to the degree of one in a 
million. Caramel, the bitter of toast and water, of chicory, 
and of burnt malt in porter, is singularly enough closely 
allied in composition to sugar. It is the black matter formed 
by heating sugar to about 400 , and has the same chemical 
formula as waterless cane sugar.* 

There is a certain class of vegetable compounds, neutral 
bodies, which are at present characterised as the bitter and 



* In all the bodies where this bitter is produced, the effect is due to the 
same cause, namely, the heating of a portion of the sugar contained in the 
substance. Hence the sweet roots, such as beet and chicory, are ready to 
yield it. The value of chicory, when mixed with coffee, depends on the pro- 
duction of caramel by the process of roasting. 



ORGAN OF TASTE. 149 

extractive principles of plants. I quote a few exanrples from 
the list given in Gregory's Organic Chemistry, p. 457. 

Gentianine, from Gentiana lutea, forms yellow needles, 
very bitter. Absinthine, from Artemisia abslntheum, or 
wormwood, is a semi-crystalline mass, very bitter, soluble in 
alcohol. Tanacetine, from tanacetum vulgar e, is very similar 
to it. Syringine is the bitter principle of the lilac, syringa 
vulgaris. Colocinthine, the active principle of colocjmth, is 
amorphous, intensely bitter and purgative. 

Quassine is a yellow, crystalline, and very bitter sub- 
stance, from the wood of quassia amara. Lupuline is the 
bitter principle of hops. Liminine, or Limine, is a bitter 
crystalline matter, found in the seeds of oranges, lemons, &c. 

With regard to vegetable and animal substances in 
general, I quote the following paragraph from Gmelin. 
' Some organic compounds, as gum, starch, woody fibre, white 
of egg, &c. have no Taste ; others have a sour taste (most 
acids) ; or a rough taste (tannin) ; or sweet (sugar, glycerin, 
glycocol) ; or bitter (bitter principles, narcotic substances, and 
many acrid substances, also many resins) ; or acrid (acrid oils 
and camphors, acrid resins, acrid alkaloids) ; or fiery (alcoholic 
liquids, volatile oils, camphors)/ * 

Not only are the different classes of vegetable and animal 
products distinguished by their taste, as apples from apricots, 
wine from cider, flesh from fat, but in every such class there 
are many distinguishable varieties. The class of wines based 
on the common ingredient, alcohol, spreads out into innume- 
rable kinds from the presence of sapid substances in quantity 
so small as to elude the search of the chemist. It is shown by 
this and many other facts, that an extremely minute portion of 
a sapid substance may make itself acutely felt to the taste. The 
bitter principle of soot, for example, can be distinguished in 
cookery to a very high degree of dilution. 

2. The organ of Taste is the tongue, and the seat of sen- 
sibility is the mucous membrane covering its surface. 



* Gmelin's Chemistry, vol. vii. p. 66. 



150 SENSE OF TASTE. 

' The upper surface of the tongue is covered all over with 
numerous projections, or eminences, named papillce. They 
are found also upon the tip and free borders, where however 
they gradually become smaller, and disappear towards its 
under surface.' These papillae are distinguished into three 
orders, varying both in size and form. 

' The large papillae, eight to fifteen in number, are found 
on the back part of the tongue, arranged in two rows, which 
run obliquely backwards and inwards, and meet towards the 
foramen caecum, like the arms of the letter V/ ' The middle- 
sized papillae, more numerous than the last, are little rounded 
eminences scattered over the middle and fore part of the 
dorsum of the tongue ; but they are found in greater numbers 
and closer together, near and upon the apex/ ' The smallest 
papillae are the most numerous of all. They are minute, 
conical, tapering, or cylindrical processes, which are densely 
packed over the greater part, of the dorsum of the tongue, 
towards the base of which they gradually disappear. They 
are arranged in lines, which correspond at first with the 
oblique direction of the two ridges of the large papillae, but 
gradually become transverse towards the tip of the tongue/ 

' These different kinds of papillae are highly vascular and 
sensitive prolongations of the mucous membrane of the 
tongue. When injected, they seem to consist almost entirely 
of capillary vessels; the large papillae, containing many vas- 
cular loops, whilst the smallest papillae are penetrated by only 
a single loop. Nerves proceed in abundance to those parts 
of the tongue which are covered with papillae, into which the 
nerve-tubes penetrate/ ' The papillae are undoubtedly the 
parts chiefly concerned in the special sense of taste; but they 
also possess, in a very acute degree, common tactile sensibi- 
lity/ — Quain, p. 999 — i oo i. 

3. With regard to the precise localities of the tongue 
where the sensibility resides, there has been some difference 
of opinion. ' We conclude generally/ say Messrs. Todd aud 
Bowman, ' with regard to the tongue, that the whole dorsal, 
or upper, surface possesses taste, but especially the circum- 
ferential parts — viz., the base, sides, and apex. These latter 



SENSIBILITY OF THE TONGUE. 151 

regions are most favourably situated for testing the sapid 
qualities of the food ; while they are much less exposed than 
the central part to the pressure and friction occasioned by 
the muscles of the tongue during mastication. The central 
region, as a whole, is more strongly protected by its dense 
epithelium, and is rougher, to aid in the comminution and 
dispersion of the food/ But in addition to the tongue, ' the 
soft palate and its arches, with the surface of the tonsils, 
appear to be endowed with taste in various degrees in different 
individuals/ — I., 443. 

The increasing sensibility of the tongue, from tip to back, 
serves as an inducement to move the food gradually onward 
in the direction of the pharynx, in order to be finely swal- 
lowed. The same sensibility, acting according to the general 
law of feeling-guided action, or volition, keeps up the mastica- 
tion, whereby the sapid action of the food is increased by 
solution and comminution of parts. Thus it is that mastica- 
tion is purely a voluntary act, while deglutition or swallowing 
is purely reflex and involuntary. 

Among the conditions of taste, in addition to solubility, it 
is noticed that ' taste, like touch, is much influenced by the 
extent of surface acted on; and is also heightened by the 
motion and moderate pressure of the substance on the gusta- 
tory membrane.' In order to taste, also, the tongue must not 
be in a dry or a parched condition. ' The impression of cold 
air deadens the sense of taste/ 

4. The precise mode of action, whereby the nerves of the 
tongue are stimulated, has not been as yet explained. Taste 
may be produced by mechanical irritation of the surface, as 
by a smart tap with the fingers on the tip of the tongue, and 
by galvanism. Looking at the substances that cause tastes, 
it appears probable, that their chemical constitution is the 
determining circumstance, whence it would seem that the 
action is a chemical one. A certain secretion from the blood 
vessels that line the papillae of the tongue combines with the 
dissolved food, and the act of combination constitutes the 
stimulus of the nerve fibres. We know that a chemical 
action on any surface or tissue will suffice to stimulate a 



152 SENSE OF TASTE. 

nerve and produce sensation ; and it is difficult to assign any 
other mode of stimulus either in taste or in smell. 

5. Having thus considered the external objects of the 
sense, and the structure of the organ, it remains for us 
to proceed to the mental phenomena, that is the Sensations 
themselves. At the outset we are met with a complexity, 
which hardly belongs to any other sense. From what has 
been already said, the reader will gather if he has not other- 
wise remarked it, that the tongue is the seat of a twofold 
sensibility, taste and touch. I am disposed to go still further, 
and to ascribe to it a threefold sensibility, viz. — touch, taste 
properly and strictly so called, and relish, or a partici- 
pation in the alimentary sensations ; my reasons are such as 
the following. First, there is an obvious continuity of struc- 
ture in the tongue and alimentary canal, a common character 
of surface, as regards mucous membrane, glands, and papillae, 
which would imply some community of action and feeling, in 
the midst of diversity. ' We may here allude to a certain 
gradation that is apparent from the papillae of touch, through 
those of taste, to the absorbing villi of the small intestines. 
Touch shades into taste, and at a lower point sensibility 
is lost/ — (Todd and Bowman, I. 441.) Second, the tongue, 
besides its power of discriminating niceties of taste that have 
very little reference to digestibility, has the power of telling at 
once whether a substance will agree or disagree with the 
stomach, and this it can do only by being as it were a part of 
the stomach, affected like it by wholesome or unwholesome 
contacts. Third, the peculiarity we call relish is not the same 
as a mere taste. For the type of taste, I may take such 
substances as common salt, quinine, soot, Epsom salts ; for 
relishes, I would select butter, animal flesh ; the savoury 
in cookery being made up much more of relishes than of 
tastes. The condition of the stomach governs the one but not 
the other. After an attack of sea-sickness, a person is still in 
a condition to discriminate sour, bitter, alkaline, or acrid, 
when the choicest food has no feeling in the mouth. Fresh, 
disgusting, nauseous, are terms applying to the stomachic 
sensibility and to that portion of the tongue in sympathy 



RELISHES. 153 

with the stomach, and not to tastes as I understand them. 
With this explanation I shall now proceed to examine in 
detail the sensations of the tongue. 

6. Deferring for the present the consideration of the 
tactile sensibility, shared by the tongue in common with the 
skin and the inner surface of the mouth, we shall have to 
classify and describe the several kinds of sensations coming 
under both taste and relish. Following out our general plan 
of taking the least intellectual sensations first, we should 
commence with the relishes and disgusts of taste, which 
constitute its relation with the alimentary sensations already 
treated of. But these feelings need not be again gone into in 
the detail ; all that appears necessary is to quote a few 
instances with the view of illustrating still farther the distinc- 
tions we have drawn between the alimentary sensations of the 
stomach and those of the mouth, and between both and the 
proper sensations of taste. 

7. The classification will therefore commence with relishes. 
These are the agreeable feelings arising from the stimulus of 
food on the organs of mastication and deglutition ; they are 
of an intense and massive kind. The substances that produce 
them in greatest degree are reckoned savoury by pre-eminence. 
Animal food has the greatest power of exciting a vigorous 
relish, or that keen sensation so powerful as a stimulus to 
mastication and the taking of food, rendering the individual 
for the time being voracious. A healthy digestion and the 
state of hunger are the necessary conditions of a strong relish, 
whether in the stomach or in the mouth, from which fact, as 
already said, we can discern the difference there is between a 
mere taste and a relish. Butter and oils and fatty substances 
are relishes, used for that purpose along with the more taste- 
less kinds of food, such as bread. Sugar I take to be both a 
taste and a relish. Being one of the necessaries of animal 
life, as is proved by the function of the saliva in producing it 
from starchy substances, there is a direct craving for it 
throughout the system, and everything craved for in this way 
is likely to produce a far deeper impression than a mere 
sensation of taste. 



154 SENSE OF TASTE. 

The relish in the mouth is much more intense or acute 
than the feeling of the stomach, although this last may be 
more influential upon the general tone of the system by its 
amount. That the two interests are not altogether identical 
is shown by the circumstance that many tongue relishes are 
hard of digestion. But I am not aware of any case where 
what passes in the mouth is found nauseous to the diges- 
tion ; on this point the two parts would seem to be in 
accord. 

8. Relishes imply their opposite, disgusts. This sensation 
is constantly inspired by certain substances in consequence 
of their own nature ; at particular times it may arise from any 
contact whatever, the alimentary surface being in a state of 
distemper. Oily substances seem to have a facility in causing 
disgust, from what cause I cannot say, seeing that they class 
also among relishes. Their mechanical form, when in the 
liquid or half liquid state, would appear to have an unfavour- 
able action : we are more ready to revolt at melted butter than 
at solid. Repletion renders any kind of food distasteful, and 
some kinds absolutely nauseous. In every point of view this 
feeling is much more dependent on the condition of the 
alimentary canal than on the material tasted. 

The different degrees of relish and nausea exhaust all 
that part of taste in sympathy with digestion ; what remains 
belongs to the distinctive sensibility of the tongue, a sensibility 
that it shares with no other part of the body. The sensation 
of bitter, or sweet, or acrid, is a separate fact of the conscious- 
ness, and can be resolved into no other conscious condition 
whatsoever. It has influences on the emotional condition of the 
system very similar to the sensations of other senses ; yielding 
pain or pleasure, and stimulating action and intelligence ; but 
remaining nevertheless as a distinct and characteristic form of 
human feeling. An exhaustive enumeration of the pure 
tastes is impossible, but we may mention a few comprehensive 
classes. 

9. Sweet tastes are a well recognised variety. At the 
head of these we must class the sugary taste as being the 
most prevalent of all forms of sweetness. The sweetness of 






SWEET TASTES. 155 

every kind of fruit, of bread, and of milk, of alcoholic liquors, 
and of confectionary in general, is known to arise from sugar. 
Besides the relish that I attribute to this article of food, 
it undoubtedly acts upon the sense of taste in a remarkable 
way. We derive from it a highly pleasurable sensation in 
this limited sense ; but no pleasure of mere taste can be com- 
pared in amount and influence to an agreeable alimentary 
feeling. We can lay it down as a rule that the pleasures of 
taste have as a whole a less influential action than the other 
class, and this must serve as a defining circumstance of every 
individual of them. The feeling of a sweet taste is keen and 
is dwelt upon with much satisfaction, but does not inspire the 
energy of the feeding action that follows up a savoury morsel. 
When digestion is satisfied there remains the enjoyment of 
sweets, and when the taste for these becomes cloyed by repeti- 
tion it is by an independent effect on the gustatory nerves.* 

But the great distinction of this feeling, and of all other 
feelings of taste proper, relates to the intelligence, or to the 
power of discrimination belonging to this organ, whereby a 
boundless number of substances can produce impressions 
recognised by us as totally different in character, which im- 
pressions of difference can remain or be recalled, after the 
original is gone, to compare with new cases that may arise, 
and to give that sense of agreement or disagreement whereon 
all our knowledge of the world is based. In the case of sweet- 
ness, for example, not only can we be affected with the 
pleasurable feeling or emotion belonging to it, but we can be 
distinctively affected by a great many substances possessing 
the quality ; we can identify some and feel a want of identity 
in others ; and we can so far retain the impression of a taste 
of yesterday as to compare it with a taste of to-day. This 
feature distinguishes the feelings of the mouth from organic 
feelings ; it distinguishes in some degree tastes from relishes, 
although these last also possess considerable range of discrimi- 
nation ; and it is the point of superiority which sight, hearing, 
and touch, have to a still greater degree over organic sensations. 



* I shall remark upon sweetness again, under Smell. 



156 SENSE OF TASTE. 

10. Next to sweet tastes I may class bitter ; the taste of 
quinine, gentian, or bitter aloes. This, and not sourness, is 
the proper contrast of sweet. Sweetness is the pleasure 
proper to taste, bitterness the peculiar or distinctive form of 
pain derived through this sense. Without having the bulk 
and influence of the massive forms of pain, this sensation is 
highly intense in its own limited region and sets on a wryness 
and contortion of the features, showing how repulsive and dis- 
tasteful it is. A man may, however, have a great deal that is 
sound and pleasant about him notwithstanding a bitter taste 
in his mouth, and he may therefore be induced, for good 
reasons, to tolerate it. This does not mar the happiness in the 
manner of many of the feelings above discussed. Still it is 
sufficient to create acts of avoidance, and sentiments of aversion, 
leaving an impression behind it sufficient to keep up a self- 
protecting impulse in the future. The sweet and the bitter 
express the two extremes of taste as regards pleasure and 
pain ; the other varieties of the feeling involve qualities more 
important as means of discrimination than as sources of emotion, 
although not wholly devoid of this influence in either of its two 
opposite forms. 

1 1. Perhaps we may be allowed to consider the saline as a 
class of tastes having something to distinguish it from the other 
great classes. The taste of a salt I hold to be more purely a 
taste than the sensation of an acid or an alkali for a reason 
that will presently be stated. Common salt may be taken as a 
good specimen of a saline taste, although very distinguishable 
from other salts, it being the glory of this sense to note a 
difference between almost any two substances that are capable 
of acting on it. Mineral waters, which contain salts of soda, 
magnesia, and lime, have a saline taste. This taste is rarely 
an agreeable one, in many cases it is very disagreeable, but we 
should be disposed to describe the feeling in most instances as 
singular and characteristic rather than as either pleasing or 
the reverse. 

The repulsive taste of Epsom salts would be termed a 
compound of the saline and the bitter. 



ALKALINE, ACID, ASTRINGENT, TASTES. 157 

12. The alkaline taste is usually more energetic than the 
saline, as might be expected, seeing that a salt is a neutralized 
alkali. But if the remark above made be correct, namely, that 
salts owe their taste principally to their base, the alkali ought to 
have a considerable share of the saline in taste. Most alkalies 
and some earths and oxides of metals have characteristic tastes, 
rarely agreeable, and often not markedly the reverse. 

13. The sour or acid taste is much more uniform in its 
nature than either the saline or the alkaline ; which we may 
fairly ascribe to the influence of the acid quality itself, irre- 
spective of the constituent elements. This is a sharp, pene- 
trating, pungent action, having when very powerful more the 
pain of a burn, than of a repulsive taste ; in diluted forms 
it is an agreeable pungent stimulus to the mouth ; hence the 
liking for vinegar (the sour of cookery, as sugar is the sweet), 
and for acid fruits and vegetables. 

14. The astringent is a distinct form of the sensation of 
taste ; for an example we may refer to the effect of alum in 
the mouth. It is evident, however, that in the acid action, and 
still more in this of astringency, we depart farther and farther 
from the proper feeling of taste towards some grosser results of 
chemical and mechanical action. Astringent substances act 
on the skin and on the mucous membranes generally, and the 
influence lies in a kind of contraction or forcible shrinking of 
the part, to which we are sensitive whenever it occurs as a 
touch. The ' rough taste of tannin ' may be put down under 
astringency. 

15. The fiery taste of alcoholic liquors, camphors, and 
volatile oils, given in Gm elm's classification, seems to me to 
be happily designated. I am disposed to think that this too 
is more of a mechanical action than a gustative, although in 
some of the other substances entering with alcohol into wines, 
spirits, and malt liquors, there is a genuine stimulus of the 
taste. Gmelins acrid taste may be looked on as a form of 
the fiery or astringent combined with some ingredient of the 
bitter. The pungency that marks all this class of sensations 
is a remarkable state of feeling deserving to be once for all 



3 58 SENSE OF SMELL. 

discussed at length. This discussion, however, I prefer to 
take up under the sense of smell, the next in order in our 
arrangement. 

1 6. With regard to the intellectual aspect of Tastes in 
general, Longet observes that these sensations are deficient as 
regards the power of being remembered ; and he gives as a 
proof the fact that when we dream of being present at a repast 
we see the viands but do not taste them. This is an extreme 
comparison ; it contrasts the most intellectual of all the senses, 
the most abiding of all sensations, with those that are least so. 
It is so far true that we do not recover sensations of taste so 
as to live habitually on the ideas of them, but they are slightly 
recoverable even as ideas, and for the purposes of identification 
and contrast, they may be recovered to a very great extent. 
A wine tasted to-day can be pronounced the same or not the 
same as a wine tasted a week ago, while well marked tastes 
may be remembered for years in this way. 

The intellectual character of the sense is also illustrated by 
its improveability. A wine-taster, a cook, or a chemist can 
acquire a delicate sensibility to differences of taste, which is not 
possible without some degree of permanence or retentiveness 
in the impressions made on the mind. 

SENSE OF SMELL. 

This sense is in close proximity to the organ of Taste, 
with which smell frequently co-operates ; but we may consider 
the sense of Smell as placed at the entrance of the lungs to 
test the purity of the air we breathe. 

i. The external objects of Smell, the material substances 
whose contact produces the sensations, are very numerous. 
They require to be in the gaseous state, in the same way that 
the objects of taste require to be liquified. Solids and liquids, 
therefore, have no smell except by being evaporated or 
volatilized. 

The greater number of gases and vapours are odorous. 
Of inodorous gases, the principal are the elements of the 
atmosphere, that is to say, nitrogen, oxygen, vapour of water 



ODOROUS SUBSTANCES. 159 

or steam, and carbonic acid.* In the long list of gaseous 
bodies recognised by the chemist, we find very generally 
some action on the nostrils, — carbonic oxide, sulphurous acid, 
chlorine, iodine, the nitrous gases, ammonia, sulphuretted and 
phosphoretted hydrogen, &c, the vapour of muriatic, nitric, 
and other acids. The singular substance ozone, produced 
occasionally in the atmosphere, is named from its smell, which 
is the smell of sulphur, and the odour given forth by elec- 
tricity. Some of the metals and solid minerals give out an 
odour, as, for example, the garlic smell of arsenic, and the 
odour of a piece of quartz when broken. The effluvia of 
the vegetable kingdom are countless ; besides such widely 
spread products as alcohol and the ethers, a vast number of 
plants have characteristic odours, usually attaching to their 
flowers. The animal kingdom also furnishes a variety of 
odours ; some general, as the ' scent of blood/ and others 
special, as musk, the flavour of the cow, the sheep, the pig. 
' All volatile organic compounds,' says Gmelin, ' are odori- 
ferous, and most of them are distinguished by very strong 
odours ; e. g. volatile acids, volatile oils, camphors or stearop- 
tenes, and alcoholic liquids ; marsh gas (carburetted hydrogen), 
and olefiant gas, have but very little odour.' 

The pleasant odours, chemically considered, are hydro- 
carbons ; that is, they are composed chiefly of hydrogen and 
carbon. Such is alcohol and the ethers, eau de Cologne, attar 
of roses, and the perfumes. Many smells, however, elude 
investigation from the minuteness of the substance causing 
them. Thus the vinous flavour is due to a substance which 
the chemist has been able to separate, being termed the 
cenanthic ether, but the bouquet of individual wines has not 
been laid hold of. 

The repulsive and disagreeable odours very frequently con- 



* With regard to carbonic acid, the assertion as to the absence of smell 
is true of the amount present in the atmosphere; but, collected in mass, 
this gas has a slightly pungent, somewhat acid odour. This is an important 
distinction observable in the case of both tastes and smells ; some substances 
yield intense effects in quantities inconceivably minute, while other sub- 
stances require to act in considerable masses before being sensible in any 
degree. 



160 SENSE OF SMELL. 

tain sulphur. Sulphuretted hydrogen is one of the most 
common of the disgusting class. 

The worst smelling substances as yet discovered have 
arsenic for their base, as will be seen from the following 
extract. (Gregory's Chemistry, p. 382.) 

' When acetate of potash is heated along with arsenious 
acid, a very remarkable liquid is obtained, which is the oxide 
of a new radical. This liquid, which is spontaneously inflam- 
mable, and has a most offensive alliaceous smell, has long been 
known in an impure state, under the names of liquor of Cadet, 
and alcarsine. Bunsen, by a long series of the most profound 
and persevering researches, established its true character as 
the oxide of the radical kakodyle.' This radical, when 
obtained, ' is a clear liquid, refracting light strongly. When 
cooled, it crystallizes in large square prisms, and acquires, 
when pure, the appearance of ice. Its smell is insupportably 
offensive, and its vapour is highly poisonous. The two latter 
characters belong to all the compounds of kakodyle, with 
hardly an exception.' Protoxide of kakodyle, the chief ingre- 
dient in the liquor of Cadet, is most offensive to the smell, 
and very nauseous to the taste. ' Chloride of kakodyle is a 
volatile, horribly fetid liquid, the vapour of which attacks 
strongly the lining membrane of the nose, and provokes a flow 
of tears/ 

The pungent odours have ammonia for their type. The 
volatile alkali, nicotine, the element of the snuffs, is an in- 
stance. In smelling salts, ammonia is the substance given 
forth. 

Liebig has been able to lay hold of and isolate the sub- 
stance that gives the odour of roast meat. Burning fat gives 
forth odours which exemplify the volatile oils specified by 
Gmelin. 

2. The development or production of odours is favoured 
by a variety of circumstances. Heat, by its volatilizing power, 
and by promoting decomposition, is the most powerful agent. 
Light, also, which carries forward the development of the 
plant, is an odoriferous influence. Hence the abundance and 
variety of odours in warm and sunny climates, and in the 






DIFFUSION OF ODOURS. 161 

summer season. The jaresence of moisture is often favourable; 
but the manner of acting of this agency is not always obvious. 
It may perhaps dissolve solid matters, and thus put them in 
the way of being volatilized ; this may be the cause of the 
evolution of perfumes after a shower. On the other hand, 
some flowers are most odorous when dried. Friction is a 
source of odours ; by rubbing two pieces of flint or siliceous 
rock a smell is given forth ; sulphur treated in the same way 
has a smell. Many of the metals have the same property. 
Doubtless some ingredient is volatilized by the rubbing 
action. 

3. The diffusion of odours is an interesting point, and has 
been cleared up by the researches of Professor Graham. Some 
odours are light, and therefore diffuse rapidly and rise high ; 
as, for example, sulphuretted hydrogen. Such is evidently 
the character of the aromatic and spice odours ; they, by their 
intensity and diffusibility combined, make themselves felt at 
great distances. The Spice Islands of the Indian Archipelago are 
recognised far out at sea. It happens, however, that the sweet 
odours are remarkably persistent, while the sulphuretted com- 
pounds, which are among the most nauseous, are very rapidly 
destroyed in the atmosphere. 

The animal effluvia (excepting sulphuretted hydrogen) are 
dense gases, and are diffused slowly. They do not rise high in 
the air. In scenting, a pointer keeps his nose close along the 
ground, with the view also no doubt of bringing his nose close 
to the objects touched by the hare. The unwholesome effluvia 
of the decaying matter laid on the soil is avoided by getting 
to a moderate height : smells will be felt by a person lying 
that would not be felt standing, such is the difference between 
a stratum of eighteen inches and the height of five feet. The 
danger of lying on the ground in tropical swamps is a matter 
of fatal experience ; swung in a tree fifty feet high, one may 
pass the night safely. Here diffusibility is one, although not 
the only circumstance ; during the night, the ventilation or 
upward current from the ground is arrested, and the malaria, 
being little diffusible or buoyant, settles on the surface. 

4. We have next to consider the organ of smell, that is, 

M 



162 SENSE OF SMELL. 

the nose. ' This organ consists of, first, the anterior prominent 
part, composed of bone and cartilage, with muscles which 
slightly move the latter, and two orifices opening downwards ; 
and' secondly, of the two nasal fossae, in which the olfactory- 
nerves are expanded. The narrow cavities last mentioned are 
separated one from the other by a partition (the septum of 
the nose) formed of bone and cartilage ; they communicate at 
the outer side with hollows in the neighbouring bones, and 
they open backwards into the pharynx through the posterior 
nares/ or openings. The sensitive surface is a membrane 
lining the whole of the interior complicated cavities, called 
the pituitary or Schneiderian membrane. The tortuosity 
of the passages of the nose gives extent of surface to this 
membrane, and thereby increases the sensibility of the nose as 
a whole. I shall quote part of the anatomical description of 
this sensitive tissue. ' The cavities of the nose are lined by a 
mucous membrane of peculiar structure, which, like the mem- 
brane that lines the cavity of the tympanum, is almost in- 
separably united with the periosteum and perichondrium, over 
which it lies. It belongs, therefore, to the class of fibro- 
mucous membranes, and it is highly vascular. Named the 
pituitary membrane, it is continuous with the skin, through 
the anterior openings of the nose ; with the mucous mem- 
brane of the pharynx, through the posterior apertures of the 
nasal fossae ; with the conjunctiva (of the eye), through the 
nasal duct and lachrymal canals ; and with the lining mem- 
brane of the several sinuses (hollows) which communicate with 
the nasal fossae. The pituitary membrane, however, varies 
much in thickness, vascularity, and general appearance in 
these different parts/ With regard also to the distribution 
of the olfactory nerve on the membrane, there are great dif- 
ferences in the parts, the general fact being that the distribu- 
tion is most copious in the interior parts of the cavity or those 
farthest removed from the outer openings. Hence the sensi- 
bility must belong mainly to those deeply lodged parts ; where 
there are no nerves there can be no feeling. 

The olfactory nerve is the most conspicuous of the nerves 
of sense; it passes inward to a special ganglion, called the 



ACTION OF ODOURS. 163 

olfactory ganglion, which is a prominent object of the brain in 
all the vertebrate animals, and in the lower orders stands 
forth as a distinct lobe, or division, of the encephalon. 

5. The action of odours on the membrane of the nose has 
next to be considered. On this subject, as on the action of 
sapid substances on the tongue, much remains to be known. 
Nevertheless there are some interesting facts which show that 
the action is of a chemical nature, or at least depends upon 
chemical conditions. For the following statements I am 
indebted to Professor Graham. 

Odorous substances in general are such as can be readily 
acted on by oxygen. For example, sulphuretted hydrogen, 
one of the most intense of odours, is rapidly decomposed in 
the air by the actio u of the oxygen of the atmosphere. In 
like manner, the hydro-carbons above alluded to as odorous, 
are all oxidizable, — the ethers, alcohol, and the essential oils 
that make the aromatic perfumes. The gases that have no 
smell are not acted on by oxygen at common temperatures. 
The marsh gas, carburetted hydrogen, is a remarkable case in 
point. This gas has no smell. As a proof of the absence of 
the oxidizable propert} 7 , Professor Graham has obtained a 
quantity of the gas from the deep mines where it had lain for 
Geological ages, and has found it actually mixed up with free 
oxygen, which would not have been possible if there had 
been the smallest tendency for the two to combine. Again, 
hydrogen has no smell, if obtained in the proper circum- 
stances ; now this gas, although combining with oxygen at a 
sufficiently high temperature, does not combine at any tem- 
perature endurable by the human tissues. 

It is farther determined, that unless a stream of air con- 
taining oxygen, pass into the cavities of the nostrils, along 
with the odoriferous effluvium, no smell is produced. Also, 
if a current of carbonic acid accompanies an odour the effect 
is arrested. 

In the third place, certain of the combinations of hydrogen 
have been actually shown to be decomposed in the act of 
producing smell. Thus when a small quantity of seleniuretted 
hydrogen passes through the nose, the metallic selenium is 

m2 



164 SENSE OF SMELL. 

found reduced upon the lining membrane of the cavities. 
The action on the sense is very strong, notwithstanding the 
minuteness of the dose ; there is an intensely bad smell, as 
of decaying cabbage, and the irritation of the membrane 
causes catarrh. 

These facts so far as they go, prove that there is a che- 
mical action at work in smell, and that this action consists in 
the combination of the oxygen of the air with the odorous 
substance. 

6. We pass now from the physical to the mental pheno- 
mena of smell; the sensations, or peculiar states of con- 
sciousness, that all those physical antecedents end in giving 
birth to. Unavoidable allusion has already been made to these 
mental effects in the description of the smelling substances. 

' Linnaeus has divided odours into seven principal classes : 
ist. aromatic, as the carnation, the laurel, &c; 2nd. fragrant, 
as the lily, the crocus, the jasmine, &c; 3rd. ambrosiac, 
among which are musk and amber; 4th. alliaceous, which 
are agreeable to some persons and disagreeable to others, and 
more or less of the character of garlic, assafoetida, for example, 
and several other gum-resinous juices; 5th. fetid, as those of 
the goat, of the rag-wort {orchis hircina), valerian, &c. ; 
6th. virulent, as those of Indian pink (I'ceillet d'Inde), and 
many plants of the family of the solaneae (from solanum, the 
"night-shade); 7th. nauseous, as the gourd, the cucumber, and 
those of its class/ — Longet, p. 151. 

Of several classifications quoted by the same author, the 
above seems to me the best, but even that one is by no means 
free from objections. The three first classes, the aromatic, 
fragrant, and ambrosiac, do not appear to have very strongly 
marked differences; nor is the distinction between fetid and 
nauseous a generic one. 

I shall attempt a classification, on the principle of select- 
ing such tastes as seem to have a well-marked character, and 
to prevail widely among natural objects. In this attempt, it 
will be convenient to commence, as in Taste, with those smells 
that owe their peculiarity to the sympathies of other organs, 
as the stomach, and the lungs. 



FRESH ODOURS. 165 

7. Fresh odours, those that have an action akin to pure 
air, or coolness in the midst of excessive heat ; an action 
mainly respiratory, or tending to increase the activity of the 
lungs, and with that the physical energy of the s}^stem. Many 
of the balmy odours of the field and garden have this effect; 
eau-de-Cologne and other, but not all, perfumes are included 
in the same class. We may recognise them by their effect in 
stimulating and reviving the system, under the oppression 
and suffocation of a crowded assembly. Such odours are not 
always fragrant in their character, for we might cite cases of 
unpleasant effluvia that seem to refresh and stimulate the 
system. The odour of a tan-yard is-perhaps a case in point. 
The close connexion of the nostrils and the lungs enables 
this reaction of the one upon the other to take place; a con- 
nexion that doubtless extends to the nervous system, although 
not traceable there. Or the influence of the gases may be 
on the surface of the lungs rather than in the nose, a thing not 
at all unlikely in many cases coming under both freshness and 
the opposite. On this supposition these would be smells 
falsely so called, and would correspond to the relishes and 
disgusts described under taste. 

8. The opposite of freshness is shown in the close or suf- 
focating odours. The effluvia of crowds, by acting on the 
lungs, have pre-eminently this damping and discouraging 
action on the powers of life, whence it is that we seek the open 
air, and the solitudes of nature, to shake off the depression of 
rooms and cities. The effluvia of warehouses, stores, and 
mills, where cotton, wool, cloths, &c, are piled up, and venti- 
lation is defective, are of a like unwholesome description. 
The smell of a pastrycook's kitchen is peculiarly sickening. 
The action of highly-heated iron stoves seems of the same 
nature ; also the smell of a woollen screen when held too close 
to the fire. In these last instances, there is believed to be an 
evolution of the unwholesome and suffocating gas, cyanogen, 
from the destructive decomposition of the woolly particles 
floating in the air, or making part of the screen. 

9. Although we may not be able to affirm that any class 
of odours stimulates the stomach by a direct influence, as fresh 



166 SENSE OF SMELL. 

odours do the lungs, there can be no doubt about the existence 
of a class of the opposite kind, the disgusting or nauseous 
odours. That is to say, there are certain gases, of which 
sulphuretted hydrogen is an example and a type, that pervert 
the action of the alimentary canal, as some tastes do. It is 
doubtful, at least so far as my information goes, on what 
surface these effluvia operate, whether on the membrane of 
the nose exclusively, or partly on it and partly on the mucous 
surface of the tongue, throat, and stomach. But whatever be 
the seat of action, the fact in question is one sufficiently well 
marked to make the specific difference of a class. 

10. It may be a question whether the foregoing classes are 
true • and proper effects on the organ of smell ; no such 
ambiguity adheres to the odours that we term sweet or 
fragrant ; these therefore I recognise as a general group with 
many varieties included under it. They represent the pure 
or proper pleasures of smell ; the enjoyment we are able to 
derive through the olfactory nerves and ganglion. They 
include the substances that convey along this channel to the 
mind a perfectly pleasurable stimulus. The sweetness may 
accompany freshness or it may not. The odour of the 
violet I take as a pure instance, there being many such among 
the flowering and fruit-bearing plants. The cases of sweetness 
enjoyed with some other quality are also extremely numerous. 

The feeling that we term sweetness, is one of the most 
remarkable experiences of the human mind. It is an effect 
that recurs upon us in many ways and from very different 
causes. We have seen it already under taste, and we shall 
find in the other senses, and in the emotions that pass beyond 
the scope of Sensation, an effect that is considered as falling 
under the same general term. This is one of our pleasurable 
feelings, not of the voluminous or massive kind, like exercise, 
warmth, or digestion, but intense or keen in the first degree. 
It stimulates a vivid expression and gesture of the kind 
marking acute pleasure : and the pleasure is one that is closely 
allied with tender emotion. 

In the region of Volition, we remark an absence of the 
spur of appetite. We class the state among the serene 



SWEET ODOURS. 167 

emotions, — like repose, warmth, the refreshment and satisfac- 
tion of a wholesome meal. In other words the pleasure of 
smell proper, and of taste proper, has a tendency to satisfy 
the mind, yielding contentment rather than craving. This is 
to be a pure emotion. In the case of excess, the state is 
characterised by the terminating sensation of satiety, which as 
regards sweetness is a state of peculiar and well-marked 
unpleasantness, — the ennui of sense. The feeling is also one 
that must be craved for as an agreeable recollection and not 
as a want ; and hence to be an object of pursuit, would need 
to have a considerable persistence in the memory : but this 
persistence is not alike for all the forms of it, that is for tastes, 
smells, sounds, sights, beauty, &c. Of smell in general, ^as of 
taste, we cannot affirm any very high persistence or endurance 
in the absence of the original ; it beins^ a matter of some 
difficulty to imagine the odour of a violet or an orange, while 
there is far less difficulty in imagining a sweet sound. The 
conclusion of the whole is that a sweet smell and a sweet taste 
are serenely pleasurable while they last, characteristically 
painful if carried to satiety, but not much desired in their 
absence. 

ii. The opposite of sweet in odours can only be described 
by the general name stinks ; the expressive word bitter is not 
usually applied to smell. The term ' mal-odour' has been 
proposed, and would be a convenient word. If we leave out 
both the nauseous odours, and certain other forms of the 
disagreeable to be afterwards described, this class will be 
limited considerably. Assafoetida may be givea as an 
example of an odour intensely repulsive by its action on the 
olfactory nerves alone. The cadaverous odour is of the repul- 
sive kind, but it is only one of many forms of disagreeable 
effluvia arising from animal decay. The aroma of some plants, 
as those quoted by Linnaeus, has an intensely unpleasant 
action. The disagreeable marsh smell may be experienced 
in its strongest form by squeezing in the fingers the brown 
scum of a stagnant pond, and applying them to the nose. 
The varieties of bad odours are endless. 

As sweetness is the proper pleasure of smell, the effect of 



168 SENSE OF SMELL. 

a stink is the proper pain of the organ, the influence that 
breeds the peculiar forms of misery that we are adapted to 
receive by means of this sense. The emotion may be specified 
as the nose-pain. Of an intense, rather than a massive 
character, we are stunned and discomposed, but not neces- 
sarily depressed or prostrated by it. We may compare it to a 
bitter taste, in this respect, and may contrast both with the 
massive pains of chillness, indigestion, or disgust. The ex- 
pression also testifies to the acuteness of the sensation, being 
an intense contortion of the features, chiefly about the nose. 
A sort of hysteric smile may likewise be provoked, which, 
like all emotional outbursts, renders the state less unendurable, 
that is less volitional. 

The Volitional stimulus to get rid of the feeling is simply 
proportioned to the degree of badness, and is no specific 
criterion of character. As regards Intellect, the action of a 
bad odour is sometimes such as to leave a very strong impres- 
sion behind, which, however, would be an exception to the 
usual nature of smells. The peculiar feeling of an ill smell 
is often appealed to metaphorically to express the feelings 
caused by human conduct. 

12. The name pungent is applicable to a large class of 
odours, and enters as an ingredient into many more. Am- 
monia is the type of substances producing this sensation. 
Nicotine, the snuff odour, is the best known example, a 
substance having a chemical analogy to ammonia. Many of 
the acid effluvia have a pungent action. This effect, however, 
is not an olfactory effect in the projDer sense of the word ; like 
astringency and acidity in taste, it would probably act on the 
sensibility of the nose independently of the power of smell. 
Snuff-takers are often devoid of smell; they lose the sense of 
sweet or repulsive in odours properly so called, but are still 
susceptible of the nicotine pungency. The influence flows 
through the same channel to the brain, and is of the same 
nature, as pricking the nose, or pulliug out hairs, being 
conveyed by the nerves of common sensation. 

Nevertheless, the excitement of pungency is a character- 
istic variety of the human consciousness, a species of agreeable 



PUNGENT AND ETHEREAL ODOURS. 169 

sensation interesting to study. It shows the effect of a sharp 
mechanical irritation of the nerves that does not amount to 
acute pain. A scratch, or a blow on the skin, an electric 
spark, a loud crash, a brilliant flame, a scorching heat, are all 
pungent effects, and seem to owe the pleasure they cause to the 
general excitement they diffuse over the system, and the lively 
expression that they give birth to. They rouse the system 
from ennui to enjoyment ; they are a species of intoxication. 
They exalt for the time being the emotional condition of the 
human system. They come therefore to be one of the 
cravings associated with ennui, or depression of mind ; they 
are likewise a stimulus for bringing out the exuberance of 
the animal spirits among the young and vigorous, and those 
that lead a ' fast ' life. 

13. The ethereal is a distinct variety of the sensations of 
smell, and is probably a mixture of pungency with odour 
strictly so called. Alcohol and the ethers, including chloro- 
form and the substance first employed as an anaesthetic, will 
recal this effect. There can be no question but that alcohol 
and the vinous aromas have true odours ; most probably, 
however, they have an influence upon other nerves than 
the olfactory ; just as the fiery taste attributed to them is 
something beyond the gustatory feeling. At all events the 
odour is a distinct one, and is very different from the odours 
of vegetation and the common perfumes. It is not destitute 
of sweetness, but something besides sweet is wanting to 
express it. 

The sulphurous and electrical odour is not radically dif- 
ferent from the above class, so far as I am able to discriminate 
it. This odour has been traced to a particular substance 
discovered by Professor Schonbein and named by him ozone, 
from the Greek word signifying smell. 

If we were to recognise a class of acrid odours, they would 
only be a mixture of pungency and bad smell ; like many of 
the so-called empyreumatic odours resulting from the action 
of heat on vegetable bodies, as in the manufacture of coal gas. 

14. The appetising smells might be treated as a class 
apart from the rest. The smell of flesh excites the carnivorous 



170 SENSE OF SMELL. 

appetite, and rouses the animal to pursuit. We may probably 
consider this influence as similar in its working to the first 
taste of savoury food ; by the law of feeling-prompted move- 
ment, it sets on the activity for an increase of the gratification. 
A savoury smell may partly give a commencing pleasure of 
digestion, and partly bring out into keenness and relief the 
sense of hunger ; in either case it would fire the energy of 
pursuit towards the full fruition. The sexual excitement in 
some animals is induced by smell. Sympathy and antipathy 
are alike generated by odours. The influence of odours upon 
the voluptuous tender emotions has not escaped the notice of 
the poets. Cabanis observes that the odours of young animals 
are of a kind to attract, and he considers even to invigorate, 
the older. 

15. It is remarked that bodies believed to have a strong 
taste, have often in reality only an odour ; of which cinnamon 
is the common instance. Perhaps too in wine a large part of 
the effect in the mouth is in the smell. Hence the ambiguous 
term 'flavour' which is applied to solid and liquid substances, 
means most frequently the odour, or the mixed effect of 
taste and odour. 

16. Smell, like taste, is an important instrument in the 
discrimination of material bodies, and therefore serves a high 
function in guiding our actions and in extending our know- 
ledge of the world. Man does not exemplify the highest 
development of this organ. The order of ruminants, certain 
of the pachydermatous animals, and above all the carnivorous 
quadrupeds, excel the human subject in the expansion given 
to the membrane of the nose, and in a corresponding 
sensibility to odours. The scent of the dog is to us almost 
miraculous ; it directs his pursuit, and tells him his where- 
abouts. It may act the part of sight in enabling him to 
retrace his steps or to find out his master. 



171 



SENSE OF TOUCH 



I. Physiologists in describing the senses not unusually 
commence with Touch. ' This/ say Messrs. Todd and Bow- 
man, ' is the simplest and most rudimentary of all the sjtecial 
senses, and may be considered as an exalted form of common 
sensation, from which it rises, by imperceptible gradations, to 
its state of highest development in some particular parts. It 
has its seat in the whole of the skin, and in certain mucous 
membranes, as that of the mouth, and is therefore the sense 
most generally diffused over the body. It is also that which 
exists most extensively in the animal kingdom ; being, pro- 
bably, never absent in any species. It is, besides, the earliest 
called into operation, and the least complicated in its impres- 
sions and mechanism.' 

It may be well admitted that Touch is less complicated 
than Taste, where four different kinds of sensations may be 
said to meet, the tactile being one of them. It may be further 
said of touch, that the mode of action (mechanical contact or 
pressure), is the most simple and intelligible of any that we 
find giving rise to sensation. Nevertheless, there is one con- 
sideration that has prevailed with me in giving it a place 
subsequent to organic sensibility, taste, and smell. Touch is 
an intellectual sense of a far higher order than these. It is 
not merely a knowledge-giving sense, as they all are, but a 
source of ideas and conceptions of the kind that remain in the 
intellect and embrace the outer world. The notions of the 
size, shape, direction, distances, and situation of external 
bodies may be acquired by touch, but not by either taste or 
smell. 

But this last assertion must be accompanied by an im- 
portant explanation. Touch, considered as a source of ideas 
such as those, is really not a simple sense, but a compound of 
sense and motion ; and it is to the muscular part of the sense, 
or to the movements of the touching organs that these con- 
ceptions owe their origin and their embodiment, as we have 
endeavoured to show in the previous chapter. The superiority 



172 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

of touch to taste and smell, in this view, therefore, consists in 
its union with movement and muscular sensibility ; and the 
same advantage pertains to sight. The contact of solid bodies 
with the surface of the body gives occasion to the exercise of 
movement, force, and resistance, and to the feelings and per- 
ceptions consequent on these : which cannot be said of smell, 
nor of taste properly so called. 

A second feature marking the superiority of the sense of 
Touch, and qualifying it to furnish intellectual forms and 
imagery, is the distinctness or separateness of the sensations 
felt over the different parts of the skin. The sensations of the 
different parts of the surface of smell, would seem to fuse all 
into one stream of sensibility ; it is not possible ever to refer 
a smell to any one portion of the membrane more than 
another. But the sensations of the skin are conveyed by 
distinct nervous filaments ; each little area of skin has a 
separate nerve, and an independent communication with the 
nerve centres, whereby we can, after a little education, refer 
each sensation to the spot where the contact is made. The 
stimulus on one finger is not, at any part of the course of the 
nerve, confused with the stimulus on another finger ; the back 
can always be distinguished from the breast, the right side 
from the left, and so on. I shall afterwards endeavour to show 
that this localization of touches has to be learned by practice ; 
but the very possibility of it rests upon the distinctness and 
independence of the nerve filaments. This is an extremely 
important fact, and makes the great difference between touch 
and what is called common sensation, or the sensibility 
diffused over all the internal organs and tissues. There is no 
such distinguishing sensibility in the stomach, or the lungs, or 
the liver; at all events, the distinctness of the nerves in 
those parts is very low in degree, just sufficient to enable us to 
refer a pain to the lungs, the liver, or the stomach, without 
indicating the particular region or subdivision. The skin is 
therefore marked by a great exaltation of the common sensi- 
bility of the body, not as regards intensity of feeling, but as 
regards distinctiveness of locality. 

2. Having made these preliminary remarks, we commence 



THE SKIN. 173 

as usual, with the objects, or external agents concerned in the 
sense of Touch. These are principally the solid substances of 
the outer world. Gases do not act on the touch unless they 
are blown with great violence. The pressure of the atmo- 
sphere gives rise to no feeling, excepting from its temperature. 
Liquids also give very little feeling, if they are of the same 
warmth as the body. The sensations of a bath are confined 
to heat or cold, which are feelings that the skin has in com- 
mon with other tissues. It is manifest that an even, equal 
pressure, such as fluids give, is not sufficient to impress the 
tactile nerves. The asperities and inequalities of solid surfaces, 
by pressing intensely on some points and not at all on others, 
are requisite for this purpose. 

The hard unyielding nature of the mineral constituents of 
the earth's crust, metals, rocks, &c, are particularly well fitted 
to excite the touch. The woody fibre of the vegetable world 
has a compactness next in degree to the solid minerals. The 
soft and yielding class of solids impress the surface in a totally 
different manner : and these differ among themselves accord 
ing as they recover their form after pressure, or not ; whence 
the distinction of elastic and non-elastic. When the substance 
is moved over the skin, the asperities come to be felt more 
acutely, and hence the farther distinction into rough and 
smooth surfaces. In treating of the sensations themselves we 
shall attend to these qualities more minutely. 

3. The sensitive organ or surface is the skin, or common 
integument of the body, the interior of the mouth, and the 
tongue. The parts of the skin are its two layers, its papillae, 
the hairs and nails, its two species of glands, — the one yielding 
sweat, the other a fatty secretion, — with blood vessels and 
nerves. I shall quote a few extracts from the anatomical 
description of those parts. Of the two layers, the outermost 
is the cuticle, epidermis, or scarf skin. ' It forms a protective 
covering over every part of the true skin, and is itself quite 
insensible and non-vascular. The thickness of the cuticle 
varies in different parts of the surface, measuring in some not 
more than ¥ ^, and in others from -^ to T V of an inch. It is 
thickest in the palms of the hands and soles of the feet, where 



174 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

the skin is much exposed to pressure, and it is not improbable 
that this may serve to stimulate the subjacent true skin to a 
more active formation of epidermis; but the difference does 
not depend solely on external causes, for it is well marked in 
the foetus. 

'Many of the cells of the cuticle contain pigment, and 
often give the membrane more or less of a tawny colour, even 
in the white races of mankind ; the blackness of the skin in 
the negro depends entirely on the cuticle. The pigment is 
contained principally in the cells of the deep layer, and appears 
to fade as they approach the surface, but even the superficial 
part possesses a certain degree of colour. 

' The true skin, cutis vera, derma, or corium, is a sentient 
and vascular texture. It is covered and defended by the 
insensible and non-vascular cuticle, and is attached to the 
parts beneath by a layer of cellular tissue, named "sub- 
cutaneous," which, excepting in a few parts, contains fat, and 
has therefore been called also the " panniculus adiposus." The 
connexion is in many parts loose and moveable, in others close 
and firm, as in the palmar surface of the hand and the sole of 
the foot, where the skin is fixed to the subjacent facise* by 
numerous stout fibrous bands, the space between being filled 
with a firm padding of fat. In some regions of the body the 
skin is moved by muscular fibres, which, as in the case of the 
orbicular muscle of the mouth, may be unconnected to fixed 
parts, or may be attached beneath to bones or fascise, like the 
other cutaneous muscles of the face and neck, and the short 
palmar muscle of the hand/ 

The upper or free surface of the true skin ' is marked in 
various places with larger or smaller furrows, which also affect 
the superjacent cuticle. The larger of them are seen opposite 
the flexures of the joints, as those so well known in the palm 



* ' Fibrous membranes, named ' aponeuroses,' or 'fascice,' are em- 
ployed to envelope and bind down the muscles of different regions, of which 
the great fascia enclosing the thigh and leg is a well known example. The 
tendons of muscles, too, may assume the expanded form of aponeuroses, as 
those of the broad muscles of the abdomen, which form strong fibrous layers 
in the walls of that cavity, and add to their strength.' — (juain, p. cxix. 



TAPILL.E OF THE SKIN. 175 

of the hand and at the joints of the fingers. The finer furrows 
intersect each other at various angles, and may be seen almost 
all over the surface ; they are very conspicuous on the back of 
the hands. These furrows are not merely the consequence of 
the frequent folding of the skin by the action of muscles or 
the bending of joints, for they exist in the foetus. The wrinkles 
of old persons are of a different nature, and are caused by the 
wasting of the soft parts which the skin covers. Fine curvi- 
linear ridges, with intervening furrows, mark the skin of the 
palm and sole ; these are caused by ranges of the papillae, to 
be immediately described. 

'Papillae. — The free surface of the corium is beset with 
small eminences thus named, which seem chiefly intended to 
contribute to the perfection of the skin as an organ of touch, 
seeing that they are highly developed where the sense of touch 
is exquisite, and vice versa. They serve also to extend the 
surface for the production of the cuticular tissue, and hence 
are large-sized and numerous under the nail. The papillae are 
large, and in close array on the palm and palmar surface of 
the fingers, and on the corres- 
ponding parts of the foot. There Fig. 6* 
they are ranged in lines form- 
ing the curvilinear ridges seen 
when the skin is still covered 
with its thick epidermis. They 
are of a conical figure, round 
or blunted at the top, and are 

received into corresponding pits on the under surface of the 
cuticle. They measure on the hand from -^-$ to yi^ of an 
inch in height. In the ridges, the large papillae are placed 
sometimes in single but more commonly in double rows, with 
smaller ones between them, that is, also on the ridges, for 
there are none in the intervening grooves. These ridges are 
marked at short and tolerably equal intervals with notches, or 
short transverse furrows, in each of which, about its middle, is 




* ' Pa/pillse of the palm, the cuticle being detached. — Magnified 35 dia- 
meters.' — (Todd and Bowmas.) 



176 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

the minute funnel-shaped orifice of the duct of a sweat gland. 
Fine blood vessels enter the papillae, forming either simple 
capillary loops in each, or dividing, according to the size of the 
papilla?, into two or more capillary branches, which turn round in 
form of loops, and return to the veins. Filaments of nerves are 
also to be discovered ascending into the papillae, but their mode 
of termination is doubtful. In other parts of the skin, endowed 
with less sensibility, the papillae are smaller, shorter, fewer in 
number, and irregularly scattered. In parts where they are 
naturally small, they often become enlarged by chronic inflam- 
mation round the margin of sores and ulcers of long standing, 
and are then much more conspicuous.' — Quain, pp. cclxxxiii. 
to cclxxxvii. 

I have quoted the description of the papillae at length 
because of their evident connexion with the sensibility of the 
skin. As in the tongue, the nerves of touch terminate in the 
papillae, and are acted on through them. I shall refrain from 
quoting the minute account of the nails and hairs, however 
interesting their structure in other points of view. Respecting 
the glands, it is only necessary to advert to the totally different 
nature of the two sorts, as respects the material secreted. The 
sweat glands are enormously numerous, and exist in all regions 
of the skin ; they are reckoned to vary from 400 to 2800 in a 
square inch. ' The sebaceous or oil glands pour out their 
secretions at the roots of the hairs, for, with very few isolated 
exceptions, they open into the hair follicules, and are found 
wherever there are hairs/ 

4. With respect to the functions and vital properties of the 
skin in general, I quote part of Dr. Sharpey's summary. 

' The skin forms a general external tegument to the body, 
defining the surface, and coming into relation with foreign 
matters externally, as the mucous membrane, with which it 
is continuous and in many respects analogous, does internally. 
It is also a vast emunctory, by which a large amount of fluid 
is eliminated from the system, in this also resembling certain 
parts of the mucous membrane. Under certain conditions, 
moreover, it performs the office of an absorbing surface ; but 
this function is greatly restricted by the epidermis. Through- 



MODES OF PRESSURE IN TOUCH. 177 

out its whole extent the skin is endowed with tactile sensi- 
bility, but in very different degrees in different parts. On 
the skin of the palm and fingers, which is largely supplied 
with nerves and furnished with numerous prominent papillae, 
the sense attains a high degree of acuteness ; and this endow- 
ment, together with other conformable arrangements and 
adaptations, invests the human hand with the character of a 
special organ of touch. A certain, though low degree of vital 
contractility, seems also to belong to the skin/ — QuAiN, 
p ccxcvi. 

Of the other parts sensible to Touch, besides the skin, 
namely, the tongue and mouth, the needful description has 
been already furnished under the sense of Taste. 

The nerves of touch are the sensory or posterior roots of 
the spinal nerves for the limbs and trunk, and certain of the 
cerebral nerves for the head, face, mouth, and tongue. 

5. The action in touch is known to be simple pressure. 
The contact of an object compresses the skin, and through it 
the embedded nerve filaments. That the squeezing or pinch- 
ing of a nerve can produce sensibility is proved in many 
experiments : in touch, the squeezing is of a more gentle 
nature, owing to the protection that the covering of skin gives 
to the nerves. The only point of interest connected with the 
mode of action is the singular fact, that very light contacts 
often produce a great sensibility, as the touch of a feather, or 
of a loose hanging piece of dress, which sensibility is diminished 
by making the contact more intense. Great pressures seem to 
yield little sensation in the skin ; they are felt mainly in the 
muscles as a feeling of force and resistance. 

This fact of the disproportion of the feeling to the pressure 
I can account for in no other way than by supposing that 
compression has an effect in deadening the conducting pro- 
perty of the nerve. In none of the other senses does a greater 
intensity of action produce a less amount of feeling. In sight 
and in hearing the sensation rises and falls with the energy of 
the light or the sound. But we know from various observa- 
tions that the compression of a nerve does tend to arrest its 
conductibility ; the deadening of the sensibility of the hand 

N 



178 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

by leaning the elbow on a table, so as to squeeze the nerve 
that passes near the surface on the elbow joint, is a familiar 
instance. 

6. We come now to the Sensations or feelings of touch, 
which are various in kind, and have many of them a con- 
siderable degree of interest, from their bearing on the higher 
operations of mind. In the order of enumeration, I shall 
commence with the emotional feelings, and end with the 
intellectual. 

Sensations of soft Touch. — In this class of feelings, we sup- 
pose the contact of some extended surface with the skin, with 
no reference to the special character of the surface, and no 
more pressure than is sufficient for closeness of contact. I 
keep out of view the feeling of temperature. A good example 
is furnished by the contact of the under clothing with the 
general surface of the body, which is most perfect under the 
bedclothes at night. The glove not too tight on the hand is 
an instance. The extended hand, resting on a cushion, or 
other soft body, is a sufficiently good type of the situation. 

The resulting emotion may be described as of the pleasur- 
able kind, not highly acute or intense, but of some considerable 
massiveness or volume. The peculiar quality of the pleasure 
may be illustrated by a comparison with gentle warmth, to 
which there is a close resemblance. The sensation is far 
inferior in power to the muscular and digestive feelings, while 
superior perhaps to mere sweetness of taste and odour, and is 
of itself insufficient to give a prevailing tone to the conscious- 
ness, even when most fully experienced ; we obtain from it, 
nevertheless, a felt contribution to the sum of sensuous enjoy- 
ment. Custom and inattention blunt our sensibility to it, but 
the contrasted state of nakedness reminds us again of its power. 
The blank sensation of the naked body is owing principally to 
the deprivation of touch. We cannot appreciate the full force 
of an extended contact without exjjressly attending to it, and 
this we rarely do. When our consciousness is fully alive to 
the state, we discern a close connexion between it and the 
whole class of serene, soft, and tender emotions, whence we 
find it suggesting these to the mind as objects of desire. 



PAINFUL SENSATIONS OF TOUCH. 179 

We do not derive any important marks of discrimination 
either from the volitional or from the intellectual aspect of 
this sensation. Its character is fully exhausted as an emotion ; 
in other words, we regard it as a pure example of an emotional 
sensation. 

7. Pungent and painful Sensations of Touch. — When 
instead of a diffusive soft contact we have an intense action 
on limited spots, mere points, as in the stroke of a whip, a 
sensation of smartness is produced very different from the 
above. In moderate degree, this gives a pleasurable pungency, 
beyond which it is acutely painful. The nerves are shocked 
as by the prick of an instrument, and the over-intensity and 
suddenness of the stimulus is a cause of pain. The nature of 
the sensation is not radically different from a cut in the skin, 
its peculiar smartness diffuses an excitement over the system 
of unparalleled rapidity. The retractation of the part would 
seem partly reflex, and partly the result of the general move- 
ment of the body that constitutes the expression of the feeling. 
It prompts the most decisive actions for avoiding the pain, 
and an intense mental aversion to all that relates to it. The 
intensity gives to it a hold in the memory not possessed by 
the luxurious feeling of diffused softness. Hence the efficacy 
of skin tortures in the discipline of all orders of sensitive 
beings. 

The sensibility of the skin to these two classes of feelings 
is pretty evenly diffused, having no connexion with the dis- 
criminative or tactile sensibility, and being, in fact, smaller 
than ordinary where that is greatest, as in the palm of the 
hand, a fact explained by the thickness of the cuticle. This 
last circumstance is the only one that I am able to specify as 
ruling the susceptibility to blows. It is well known that the 
cheek and the ear smart acutely when struck or pinched. It 
would seem that the amount of feeling, pleasurable or painful, 
that may be excited in the skin, has nothing to do with the 
abundance of the nerves distributed to it, there being in this 
respect an analogy with the organic sensations of the internal 
organs, which are often very intense in parts supplied with 
few nerves, as in the ligaments, bones, liver, &c. So far as 

N 2 



180 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

mere feeling or emotion is concerned, a very few fibres, in- 
tensely excited, can kindle up the most vehement mental 
effects. 

8. Sensations of Temperature. — Excepting in surfaces of 
the same degree of temperature as the skin, these feelings 
must enter into every instance of touch. As sensations, we 
have already described them among the organic feelings ; we 
need only to remark here, that the skin is extremely liable to 
this influence, and is very susceptible to it ; probably as much 
so as to the effects above described. There is no reason for 
supposing that any other nerves than those of touch are 
needed to rouse a sensation of warmth or of coolness, although 
the action is doubtless in some degree peculiar. This action, 
however, if we look at it closely, may still be viewed as of a 
mechanical kind ; for the chief influence of slight alterations 
of temperature is to expand or contract the material affected. 
In the human body, great heats and great colds derange the 
.structure of the tissues, and are extremely painful ; but the 
smaller changes may have no more than the mechanical effect 
now supposed.* 

The sensation of wetness seems to be nothing else than a 
form of cold. 

The mutual contact of living animal bodies yields a com- 
plex sensation of softness and warmth, and excites the cor- 
responding emotions. There may be in addition magnetic or 
electric influences of a genial kind, but the reality of such 
currents is by no means established. 

9. Otherpainfvl Sensations of the Skin. — Among these I 
would first advert to the sensation of tickling, of which however, 



* Sir William Hamilton thinks it probable that the sensation of heat 
depends on a peculiar set of nerves, for two reasons: ' 1st, Because certain 
sentient parts of the body are insensible to this feeling ; and 2nd, because I 
have met with cases recorded, in which, while sensibility in general was 
abolished, the sensibility to heat remained apparently undiminished.' — 
Beid, p. 875. 

On the other hand, the experiments of Weber, while leading to the con- 
clusion that the integrity of the skin is necessary to the discrimination of 
degrees of temperature by touch, give no ground for supposing that any 
other nerve fibres than those of common tactile sensation are necessary. — 
Caepentee's Human Physiology, 4th edition, § 866. 



IMPRESSIONS OF DISTINGUISHABLE POINTS. 181 

I can render no explanation. It is a very remarkable case 
of nervous susceptibility. The liability of the sole of the foot 
to this intense and unbearable excitement, is probably of a 
piece with the tendency of wounds in the same part to cause 
lock-jaw. Itchiness is a peculiar form of painful sensation, 
strongly exciting us to mechanical irritation, as a means of 
relief, which, however, while only temporarily alleviating the 
evil, in the end increases it. The conflict of volitions thus 
arising is the worst part of the infliction. 

All the parts of the skin are liable to yield painful sensa- 
tions, especially under injury or distemper. The epidermis is 
itself insensible, but the true skin is excessively alive to 
feeling. When lacerated, chafed, or burnt, it causes acute 
pains. Its capillary vessels and numerous sweat glands and 
oil glands are, in all probability, the source of organic sen- 
sations of cheerfulness or oppression, according as they are 
working well or ill. The hairs are themselves insensible, but 
the plucking of them causes acute pains. The place of attach- 
ment of the nails is the seat of a violent form of acute pain, 
which has a fatal facility of seizing on the imagination, and 
exciting revulsion even in idea. 

We pass now to the more intellectual sensations of Touch. 

i o. Impressions of distinguishable Points. — I have already 
called attention to the discriminative or articulate character 
of the sense of touch, whereby it receives distinguishable im- 
pressions from the variously situated parts of an extended 
surface. Very interesting differences in the degree of this 
discrimination are observable on different parts of the surface' 
of the body, which have been especially illustrated by the 
experiments of Weber. 

■ These consisted in placing the two points of a pair of 
compasses, blunted with sealing-wax, at different distances 
asunder, and in various directions, upon different parts of the 
skin of an individual. It was then found, that the smallest 
distance at which the contact can be distinguished to be 
double, varies in different parts between the thirty-sixth of 
an inch and three inches; and this seems a happy criterion 
of the acuteness of the sense. We recognise a double im- 



182 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

pression on very sensible parts of the skin, though the points 
are very near each other; while, in parts of less acute sensi- 
bility, the impression is of a single point, although they may 
be, in realitjr, far asunder. 

' In many parts we perceive the distance and situation 
of two points more distinctly when placed transversely, than 
when placed longitudinally, and vice versa. For example, 
in the middle of the arm or fore-arm, points are separately 
felt at a distance of two inches, if placed crosswise; but 
scarcely so at a distance of three, if directed lengthwise to 
the limb. 

1 Two points, at a fixed distance apart, feel as if more 
widely separated when placed on a very sensitive part, than 
when touching a surface of blunter sensibility. This may be 
easily shown by drawing them over regions differently en- 
dowed; they will seem to open as they approach the parts 
acutely sensible, and vice versa. 

1 If contact be more forcibly made by one of the points 
than by the other, the feebler ceases to be distinguished ; the 
stronger impression having a tendency to obscure the weaker, 
in proportion to its excess of intensity. 

' Two points, at a fixed distance, are distinguished more 
clearly when brought into contact with surfaces varying in 
structure and use, than when applied to the same surface, as, 
for example, on .the internal and external surface of the lips, 
or the front and back of the finger. 

' Of the extremities, the least sensitive parts are the 
middle regions of the chief segments, as in the middle of the 
arm, fore-arm, thigh, and leg. The convexities of the joints 
are more sensible than the concavities. 

' The hand and foot greatly excel the arm and leg, and 
the hand the foot. The palms and soles respectively excel 
the opposite surfaces, which last are even surpassed by the 
lower parts of the fore-arm and leg. On the palmar aspect 
of the hand, the acuteness of the sense corresponds very accu- 
rately with the development of the rows of papillae ; and 
where these papillae are almost wanting, as opposite the 
flexions of the joints, it is feeble. 






weber's observations. 183 

1 The scalp has a blunter sensibility than any other part 
of the head, and the neck does not even equal the scalp. The 
skin of the face is more and more sensible as we approach the 
middle line; and the tip of the nose and red parts of the lips 
are acutely so, and only inferior to the tip of the tongue. 
This last, in a space of a few square lines,* exceeds the most 
sensitive parts of the fingers ; and points of contact with it 
may be generally perceived distinctly from one another, when 
only one-third of a line intervenes between them. [The 
superior sensibility of the tip of the tongue to the finger, is 
illustrated by the familiar observation, that a hole in a tooth 
seems very much exaggerated when felt by the tip of the 
tongue.] As we recede from the tip along the back or sides 
of the tongue, we find the sense of touch much duller. 

' The sensibility of the surface of the trunk is inferior to 
that of the extremities or head. The flanks and nipples, which 
are so sensitive to tickling, are comparatively blunt in regard 
to the appreciation of the distance between points of contact. 
Points placed on opposite sides of the middle line, either 
before or behind, are better distinguished than when both are 
on the same side. 

' The above are the results obtained by making the several 
parts mere passive and motionless recipients of impressions. 
They evince the precision of the sense in so far only as it 
depends on the organization of the tactile surface. The aug- 
mented power derived from change of position of the object 
with regard to the surface, is well illustrated by keeping the 
hand passive, while the object is made to move rapidly over 
it. In this case the contact of the two points is separately 
perceived, when so close that they would, if stationary, seem 
as one. If, still further, the fingers be made to freely traverse 
the surface of an object, under the guidance of the mind, the 
appreciation of contact will be far more exquisite, in propor- 
tion to the variety of the movements, and the attention given 
to them. We are then said to feel, or to examine by the 
sense of touch/ — Todd and Bowman, I., 429-30. 



* A line is j^th. of an inch. 



184 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

These observations of "Weber have been deservedly cele- 
brated by physiologists, as the foundation of an accurate mode 
of estimating the tactile sensibility of the skin. They have 
been extended by other observers, as may be seen in Dr. 
Carpenter's article on Touch in the Cyclopaedia of Anatomy. 
It is necessary, however, for us to discuss more closely the 
points involved in them, and especially to discriminate the 
tactile, from the muscular element of the sensations. 

Whenever two points produce a double sensation, it is to 
be presumed that one point lies on the area supplied by one 
distinct nerve, while the other point lies on the area of a 
second nerve. There is a certain stage of subdivision or 
branching of the nerves of touch, beyond which the impres- 
sions are fused into one on reaching the cerebrum. How 
many ultimate nerve fibres are contained in each unit nerve, 
we cannot pretend to guess ; but on the skin of the back, the 
middle of the thigh, and the middle of the fore- arm, an area 
of three inches diameter, or between six and seven square 
inches, is supplied by the filaments of a single unit. On the 
point of the finger the units are so multiplied, that each 
supplies no more than a space whose diameter is the tenth of 
an inch. Such units correspond to the entire body of the 
olfactory or gustatory nerve, for these nerves give but one 
undivided impression for the whole area affected. If we had 
two different regions of smell, and two distinct olfactory 
nerves, we should then probably have a feeling of double- 
ness or repetition of smells, like the sense of two points on 
the skin. 

The primitive or original impression of a plurality of 
points, sufficiently far asunder, can be nothing but a feeling of 
repetition, a sense that the same impression reaches us through 
different unknown channels. What the real distance of the 
points is, we have no means of judging, any more than we can 
tell previous to experience whereabouts on the body the 
impression is made. Hence in those of the experiments that 
relate to our sense of the relative interval of the points, as 
when they pass from a duller to a more sensitive region, there 
are involved perceptions that we have got at in some other 



MUSCULAR IMPRESSIONS OF TOUCH. 185 

way than through the sense of contact. This other means is 
the feeling of movement or the muscular sensibility, without 
which it is impossible to explain the vast majority of the sen- 
sations of Touch. We have already dwelt upon the percep- 
tions growing out of the moving apparatus of the body, and 
we must here, and under the two following senses, Hearing 
and Sight, point out the combinations that are formed by sense 
and movement. 

1 1 . Sensatio ns of To uch involv ing muscular perceptions. 
— In discussing these we shall begin with examples that are 
almost purely muscular, the tactile sensibility being a mere 
incident of the situation. The feeling of weight is of this 
description ; depending on the sense of muscular exertion, 
aided perhaps in some cases by the feeling of compression of 
the skin. On this last point I quote from Todd and Bowman. 
1 Weber performed experiments to ascertain how far we are 
capable of judging of weight by the mere sense of contact 
[without muscularity.] He found that when two equal 
weights, every way similar, are placed on corresponding parts 
of the skin, we may add to or subtract from one of them a 
certain quantity without the person being able to appreciate 
the change ; and that when the parts bearing the weights, as 
the hands, are inactively resting upon a table, a much greater 
alteration may be made in the relative amount of the weights 
without his perceiving it, than when the same parts are 
allowed free motion. For example, 32 ounces may thus be 
altered by from 8 to 12, when the hand is motionless and 
supported ; but only by from i^- to 4, when the muscles are in 
action ; and this difference is in spite of the greater surface 
affected (by the counter pressure against the support) in the 
former than in the latter case. Weber infers that the measure 
of weight by the mere touch of the skin is more than doubled 
by the play of the muscles. We believe this estimate to be 
rather under than over the mark.' — p. 431. 

That the discriminative sensibility of the skin to degrees 
of compression may operate in appreciating weight is further 
confirmed by the following statement. 'The relative power 
of different parts to estimate weight corresponds very nearly 



186 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

with their relative capacities of touch. Weber discovered that 
the lips are better estimators of weight than any other part, as 
we might have anticipated by their delicate sense of touch and 
their extreme mobility. The fingers and toes are also very 
delicate instruments of this description. The palms and soles 
possess this power in a very remarkable degree, especially 
over the heads of the metacarpal and metatarsal bones ; while 
the back, occiput, thorax, abdomen, shoulders, arms, and legs, 
have very little capacity of estimating weight.' — ib. p. 432. 

What is said of weight applies to any other form of 
pressure, force, or resistance. The impetus of a push or a 
squeeze received on the hand is measured by the muscular 
exertion induced to meet it, and in some small degree, as 
above described, by the compression of the skin at the place of 
contact. 

The qualities of hardness and softness are appreciated by 
this combined sensibility ; the one means a greater resistance 
to compression, and the other a less. From the unyielding 
stone or metal to the mobility of the liquid state, we have all 
degrees of this property; the entire class of soft, viscid, and 
fibrous substances lying between. It belongs to many of the 
manual arts to appreciate minute differences of consistence in 
the class of soft bodies ; the pastrycook, the builder, the 
sculptor, &c. In this they are assisted by practice, which 
improves all sensibilities ; but there are great varieties of 
natural endowment in the case, which varieties must have 
their seat principally in the muscular tissue, and secondarily, 
in the skin and nerves of the hand. 

The feeling of elasticity is only a case of simple resistance 
to force, exerted in the particular circumstance of a rebound 
or reaction from pressure. The elasticity implies a perfect 
return to the original position ; air is elastic, and so is steel 
and ivory, meaning that when in any way compressed or 
distorted, they recover themselves. The softness that is agree- 
able to rest upon must be an elastic softness ; we can note 
the difference by conrparing a hair cushion with a lump of clay. 

We may next consider the sensations rising out of the 
qualities of roughness and smoothness. Simple contact, we 



ROUGHNESS AND SMOOTHNESS. ] 87 

have seen, gives the sense of a multiplicity of points. The 
fiuger resting on the end of a brush would make us aware of 
its character ; that is we should have the feeling of a plurality 
of pricks. In this way we are sensitive to rough and pointed 
surfaces. We can distinguish between bluntly-pointed 
asperities, like a file, and sharp points like a horse-comb : 
the sensibility of a blunt point being distinct from a needle- 
prick. We can also distinguish between thick-set points and 
such as are more scattered, provided they are not too close for 
the limits of sensibility of the part, that is one-tenth of an 
inch for the finger, and one-thirtieth for the tip of the tongue. 
On the back, the calf of the leg, and the middle of the fore- 
arm, where points are confounded up to the distance of three 
inches, roughness would be altogether imperceptible. 

In i,hese instances, the thing touched is supposed to lie at 
rest on the finger, or on the part touched. But this does not 
do full justice to the tactile sensibility ; it is requisite that we 
should move the finger to and fro over the surface in order to 
give fall range to the power of discrimination. By this 
means we may discriminate far nicer shades of roughness ; 
we may in fact appreciate minuter intervals than in the 
resting position. Supposing the sensibility of the tip of the 
finger to be one line at rest, by motion we can extend this 
sensibility to an unknown limit. The case may be illustrated 
by the micrometer screw on an astronomical instrument. The 
divisions on the limb of the instrument extend we may sup- 
pose to one minute of a degree, and if the index lie between 
two divisions, its pjace can be measured by the number of 
turns of the screw required to bring it up to one of the 
divisions. So, if a point is undistinguished on the finger in 
consequence of not being a line removed from the neighbour- 
ing point, we may estimate its distance nevertheless by the 
amount of motion of the finger needed to bring it into the 
limit of sensibility. I will take as an example a row of points, 
one-fortieth of an inch apart, the extremes being one-tenth, 
which is the sensibility of the tip of the finger. This row 
would be felt as two points if the finger were stationary. But 
by the motion of the fiager one point would pass away and 



188 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

another would come up, and there would be a feeling of the 
interval moved over between the perception of the successive 
points, which would be a measure of the intervals. The sense 
of movement would thus be brought in to aid the tactile 
feeling, and to reveal a degree of closeness in asperities beyond 
the reach of touch unassisted by motion. It is agreeable to 
all experience that the roughness of a surface becomes far 
more apparent by drawing the hand over it ; whether the 
sense of movement explains all that there is in this in- 
creased sensibility, I will not undertake to say. For we 
must consider that friction creates a new variety of pressure 
on the skin and nerves, and the kind of friction is so different 
for a smooth and for a rough body, that by it alone we might 
learn to distinguish between the rough and the smooth 
contact. 

If any one will make the experiment of drawing over the 
finger two points, so close that to the touch they seem one 
when at rest, it will be found that the motion gives the feeling 
of doubleness. What is the limit of this, for a limit there is, 
it would take a considerable amount of observation to decide. 
I venture to affirm that at least half the interval will become 
sensible by the motion of the points, the motion being by 
bringing them in train, and not abreast of one another. 

Whatever may be the explanation of the increase of sensi- 
bility due to movement, the fact is an important one. A vast 
amount of discrimination turns upon it. From the variety of 
trace made by different kinds of surface, we can distinguish 
them or identify them at pleasure, up to a considerable limit 
of delicacy. Hence the power of telling substances by the 
feel, and of deciding on the qualities and merits of texture and 
workmanship. Degrees of polish in stone, metal, or wood, the 
fineness of cloths, wool, &c, the beat of a pulse, the quality of 
powdered substances, and many things besides, are matters of 
judgment and comparison to the touch, and put to the proof 
its natural or acquired delicacy. 

The feeling of temperature is an element in many dis- 
criminations, as in the distinction between stone and wood. 
Clamminess is a distinct sensation arising from the adhesion 



EXTENSION, SIZE, FORM. 189 

of a substance to the skin, and is an uneasy feeling, caused in 
consequence of some interruption of the natural functions of 
the part. 

These tactile sensations whereby surfaces are discriminated, 
have a great degree of persistence in the recollection ; some- 
thing intermediate between tastes or smells, and sights. We 
do not revel in them as imagery it is true, but this would be 
accounted for by the superior hold that we have of the very 
same objects by means of sight. With the blind the case must 
be different ; to them the outer world must be represented as 
outspread matters of contact ; their visions of the surfaces of 
all things are visions of touch. 

Our permanent impressions of touch serve us for comparing 
present surfaces with remembered ones, and for identifying or 
distinguishing the successive objects that come before the 
view. The cloth-dealer sees whether a given specimen cor- 
responds with another piece that passed through his hands a 
year ago, or with a permanent standard impressed upon his 
finger sensibility. 

1 2. Qualities of Extension, Size, Form, &c. — I have endea- 
voured to show in the previous chapter that these qualities 
are impressed upon us by the movement they cause, and that 
the feelings they produce are feelings of movement or muscu- 
larity. As the origin of our permanent notions of these 
qualities makes one of the contested and doubtful questions of 
metaphysics, I shall take an opportunity at some later stage 
of the exposition, of examining the views opposed to those I 
advocate ; and for the present I shall merely present some 
farther illustrations by way of making these more intelligible. 
Although I conceive that the movements of the limbs and 
body, without any contact with external matter, would impress 
upon the mind the feeling of extension, this being nothing 
else than a feeling of the sweep of a moving organ, yet in the 
actual experience there is usually combined some sensation 
with the muscular impressions ; and this additional sensation 
mixes itself up, but not inseparably, with the feeling proper to 
extension or movement. 

By drawing the hand over a surface, as, for example, six 



J 90 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

inches of wire, we have an impression of the quality of the 
surface, and also of its length. Transferring the hand to 
another wire twelve inches long, the increased sweep necessary 
to reach the extremity is the feeling and the measure of the 
increased extent. By practising the arm upon this last wire, 
we should at last have a fixed impression of the sweep neces- 
sary for a foot of length, so that we could say of any extended 
thing, whether it was within or beyond this standard. Nay 
more, whenever anything brought up a foot to our recollection, 
the material of the recollection would be an arm impression, 
just as the material of the recollection of greenness is a visual 
impression. 

If we pass from mere length to some area, as, for example, 
the surface of a pane of glass, we have only a greater com- 
plexity of movement and of the corresponding impression. 
Moving in one direction we get the length, in the cross direc- 
tion we bring other muscles into play, and get an impression 
of movement on a different portion of the moving system. In 
this way we should have the impression of a right angle, or a 
builder's square. The full impression of the pane of glass 
would result from a movement from side to side over its whole 
length, or from a movement round the edge and several times 
across, so as to leave behind the sense of a possibility of finding 
surface anywhere within certain limits of length and breadth. 
In this shape, and in no other that I know of, would an ex- 
tended surface be conceived by the mind through muscularity 
and touch. (The action of vision will be afterwards dis- 
cussed.) 

A cubical block, exemplifying all the three dimensions of 
solidity, presents nothing radically new. A new direction is 
given to the hand, and a new class of muscles are brought to 
contribute to the feeling. The movement must now be over 
the length, over the breadth, and over the thickness, and the 
resulting impression will be a complication of the three move- 
ments. To get a hold of the entire solidity, it is necessary to 
embrace all the surfaces one after another, which makes the 
operation longer, and the notion more complex and more diffi- 
cult to retain. But the resulting impression, fixed by being 



SOLIDITY. 191 

repeated, is of the same essential nature as the notion of a 
line or a superficies ; it is the possibility, the potentiality, of 
finding surface in three different directions •within given limits. 
A cubical block of one foot in the side means that, com- 
mencing at an angle, and going along one edge, a foot range 
may be gone over before the material cease, that the same may 
then be done across, and also downwards, and that between 
every two edges there is an extended solid surface. 

The multiplication of points of contact, by our having a 
plurality of fingers, very much shortens the process of acquiring 
notions of surface and solidity. In fact we can by means of 
this plurality measure a length without any movement ; the 
degree of separation of the fingers made sensible by the tension 
of their muscles being enough. Thus I can appreciate a dis- 
tance of six or eight inches by stretching the thumb away 
from the fingers, as in the span of the hand. By keeping the 
fingers expanded in this way so as to embrace the breadth of 
an object, and then drawing the hand along the length, I can 
appreciate a surface by a single motion combined with this fixed 
span of the thumb and fingers. I may go even farther ; by 
bringing the flexibility of the thumb into action, I can keep 
the fingers on one surface and move the thumb over another 
side, so as to have a single impression corresponding to solidity, 
or to three dimensions. We are, therefore, not confined to 
one form of acquiring the notion, or to one way of embodying 
it in the recollection ; we have many forms, which we come to 
know are equivalent and convertible, so that where we find 
one, we can expect another. But the most perfect combination 
of perceiving organs remains to be mentioned, namely, the 
embrace of the two hands. The concurrence of the impres- 
sions thus flowing from the two sides of the body to the 
common centre produces a remarkably strong impression of 
the solidity of a solid object. The two separate and yet coin- 
ciding images support one another, and fuse together in such 
a way as make the most vivid notion of solidity that we are 
able to acquire by means of touch. The parallel case of the 
two eyes, to be afterwards explained, will be found still more 
striking. 



192 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

The notion of solidity thus acquired is complex, being 
obtained through a union of touch and muscularity, and com- 
bining perception of surface with perception of extended form. 
By the swing of the arms alone we have a notion of empty 
space, which means to us nothing more than scope for move- 
ment, and consequently for extended matter. Even when 
vision is superadded, I can find nothing more in our conception 
of space than this potentiality of movement. We measure 
space by the extent of movement permitted in it ; this move- 
ment being, in the last resort, the movement of our own body 
or limbs ; the very material of the conception in its most 
refined form, can never, so far as I can see, get beyond an 
impression of movement, engrained by repetition on the 
muscular frame-work, just as colour becomes a permanent 
impression on the visual organs, in connexion with the brain. 

13. Distance, direction, and situation, when estimated 
by touch, involve, in the very same manner, the active organs ; 
the tactile sensations merely furnishing marks and starting- 
points like the arrows between the chain-lengths in land- 
measuring. Distance implies two fixed points, which the 
touch can ascertain and identify ; the actual measurement is 
by means of the sweep of the hand, arm, or body from the one 
to the other. Direction implies a standard of reference ; some 
given movement must fix a standard direction, and movement 
to or from that will ascertain any other. Our own body is the 
most natural starting point in counting direction ; from it we 
measure right and left, back and fore. For the up and down 
direction we have a very impressive lead, this being the direction 
of gravity. When we support a weight we are drawn down- 
ward ; when not sustaining the arms by voluntary effort, they 
sink downward ; when our support gives way, the whole body 
moves downward. Hence we soon gain an impression of the 
downward movement, and learn to recognise and distinguish 
this from all others. If a blind man is groping at a pillar, he 
identifies the direction it gives to his hand, as the falling or 
the rising direction. Circumstances do not, perhaps, so 
strongly conspire to impress the standard directions of right 
and left, but there is an abundant facility in acquiring them 



DISTANCE, DIRECTION, SITUATION. 193 

too. The right deltoid muscle is the one chiefly concerned in 
drawing the right arm away from the body, and without our 
knowing anything about this muscle, we yet come to associate 
the feeling of its contraction with a movement away from the 
body to the right. All directions that call forth the play of 
the same muscles, are similar directions as respects the body : 
different muscles mean different directions. The great pectoral 
bringing the arm forward, the deltoid lifting it away from the 
side, the trapezius drawing it backward, indicate to our minds 
so many different positions of the guiding object ; and we do 
not confound any one with the other. We learn to follow the 
lead of each one of these indications ; to make a forward step 
succeed the contraction of the pectoral, a step to the right the 
deltoid, a step backward the trapezius. 

If distance and direction be known, we have everything 
implied in situation which is measured by those two elements. 
The situation of another person towards me, is either right, 
left, before, behind, up, or down, or a medium between some 
of these ; and at a given distance of so many inches, feet, or 
yards. 

Form or shape is appreciated as easily as situation. It 
depends upon the course given to the movements in following 
the outline of a material body. Thus we acquire a movement 
corresponding to a straight line, to a ring, an oval, &c. This 
is purely muscular. The fixed impressions engrained upon 
the organs in correspondence with these forms have a higher 
interest than mere discrimination. We are called to reproduce 
them in many operations — in writing, drawing, modelling, &c. 
— and the facility of doing so will depend in great part upon 
the hold that they have taken upon the muscular and nervous 
mechanism. The susceptibility and retentiveness of impres- 
sions necessary to draw or engrave skilfully are almost entirely 
muscular properties. 

14. So much for the qualities revealed to us by touch, 
either alone or in conjunction with movement. The accompani- 
ment of activity belongs to every one of the senses ; it serves 
to bring about or increase the contact with the objects of the 
sense. There is in connexion with each of the senses a parti- 

o 



194 SENSE OF TOUCH. 

cular verb, or designation, implying action ; to taste implies 
the movement for bringing the substance upon the tongue ; 
to smell, or to snuff, means an active inhalation of the odorous 
stream ; to feel signifies the movement of the hand or other 
organ over the surface in search of impressions ; in like 
manner, to hear and to see are forms of activity. In the cases 
of taste and smell, the action does not contribute much to the 
sensation or the knowledge ; in the three others (two especially) 
it is a material element, since in all of them, direction and 
distance are essential parts of the information. Now, since 
movement is required to bring objects within reach, the value 
of any of our senses will depend very greatly upon the activity 
of the organs that carry the sensitive surface, the tentacula, so 
to speak. This activity grows out of the muscular and nervous 
energy of the frame, and not out of the particular endowment 
of the sensitive part. It is a voluntary exertion, at first 
spontaneous purely, always spontaneous in some degree, but 
linked to, and guided by, the sensibility. The flush of activity 
lodged in the arm and fingers is the first inspiration towards 
obtaining impressions of touch ; the liking or disliking for the 
impressions themselves comes in to modify and control the 
central energy, and to reduce handling to a system. 

15. Touch being concerned in innumerable handicraft 
operations, the improvement of it as a sense enters largely into 
our useful acquisitions. The graduated application of the 
force of the hand has to be ruled by touch ; as in the potter 
with his clay, the turner at his lathe, the polisher of stone, 
wood, or metal, the drawing of the stitch in sewing, baking, 
taking up measured quantities of material in the hand. In 
playing on finger instruments, the piano, guitar, organ, &c., 
the touch must measure the stroke or pressure that will yield 
a given effect on the ear. 

16. The observations made on persons born blind have 
furnished a means of judging how far touch can substitute 
sight both in mechanical and in intellectual operations. These 
observations have shown that there is nothing essential to the 
highest intellectual processes of science and thought that may 
not be attained in the absence of sight. The integrity of the 



OBJECTS OF HEARING. 195 

moving apparatus of the frame renders it possible to acquire 
the fundamental notions of space, magnitude, figure, force, 
and movement, and through these to comprehend the great 
leading facts of creation as taught in mathematical, mechanical, 
or physical science. 

17. The skin is liable to feelings not produced by an 
external pressure, but resembling what would arise from par- 
ticular actions, and suggesting them to the mind. These are 
called ' subjective sensations/ The tingling of a limb asleep, 
formication, or a sensation as of the creeping of insects, heat, 
chilliness, &c, are examples. — (Todd and Bowman, I. 433.) 

SENSE OF HEARING. 

This sense is more special and local than the foregoing, 
but agrees with Touch in being a mechanical sense as dis- 
tinguished from what I have chosen to consider as the chemical 
senses — Taste and Smell. 

1. The objects of hearing, are material bodies in a state of 
tremor, or vibration, brought on when they are struck, which 
vibration is communicated to the air of the atmosphere, and 
is thereby propagated till it reach the hollow of the ear. 

All bodies whatever are liable to the state of sonorous 
vibration ; but they differ very much in the degree and kind 
of it. The metals are the most powerful sources of sounds, as 
we see in bells ; after these come woods, stones, earthy bodies. 
A hard and elastic texture is the property needed. Liquids 
and gases sound very little, unless impinged by solids. The 
howling and rustling of the wind arise from its playing upon 
the earth's surface as on the .ZEolian harp. The thunder is an 
example of a pure aerial sound, the intensity, great as it is, 
being very small in comparison to the mass of air put in 
agitation. 

It belongs to the science of Acoustics to explain the pro- 
duction and propagation of sound, and the forms of sounding 
instruments of all kinds. Here we are considering the effects, 
and not the instruments of sound. Even the human voice, 
whose description cannot be omitted in a treatise on mind, 
will come in under another head. 

o2 



196 SENSE OF HEARING. 

2. The organ is the Ear. £ It is divisible into three parts ; 
the external ear, the tympanum or middle ear, and the 
labyrinth or internal ear ; and of these the first two are to be 
considered as accessories or appendages to the third, which 
is the sentient portion of the organ/ 

The external ear includes ' the pinna — the part of the 
outer ear which projects from the side of the head,— and the 
meatus or passage which leads thence to the tympanum, and 
is closed at its inner extremity by the membrane interposed 
between it and the middle ear (membrana tympani)/ 

' The tympanum, or drum, the middle chamber of the ear, 
is a narrow irregular cavity in the substance of the temporal 
bone, placed between the inner end of the external auditory 
canal and the labyrinth. It receives the atmospheric air from 
the pharynx through the Eustachian tube, and contains a 
chain of small bones, by means of which the vibrations, com- 
municated at the bottom of the external meatus to the mem- 
brana tympani, are conveyed across the cavity to the internal 
ear, the sentient part of the organ. The tympanum contains 
likewise minute muscles and ligaments which belong to the 
bones referred to, as well as some nerves which end within this 
cavity, or only pass through it to other parts/ 

As to the cavity of the tympanum, I shall content myself 
with quoting the description of the anterior and posterior 
boundaries by which it connects itself with the outer and 
inner portions of the ear, and which are therefore the main 
links in the line of communication from without inwards. 

The outer boundary, formed by a thin semi-transparent 
membrane, the membrana tympani, which may be seen by 
looking into the ear, ' is nearly circular, and is slightly concave 
on the outer surface. It is inserted into a groove at the end 
of the passage of the outer ear, and so obliquely that the 
membrane inclines towards the anterior and lower part of the 
canal at an angle of 45 . The handle of one of the small 
bones of the tympanum, the malleus, descends between the 
middle and inner layers of the membrane to a little below its 
centre, and is firmly fixed to it ; and as the direction of the 



THE EAK. 197 

handle of the bone is slightly inwards, the outer surface of the 
membrane is thereby rendered concave.' 

The inner wall of the tympanum, which is formed by the 
outer surface of the internal ear, is very uneven, presenting 
several elevations and foramina. The foramina or openings 
are two in number, the oval foramen (fenestra ovalis) and the 
round or triangular opening (fenestra rotunda). Both are 
closed with membranes, which render the inner ear, with its 
containing liquid, perfectly tight. To one of them, the oval 
foramen, a small bone is attached, the other, the round foramen, 
has no attachment. These two openings are the approaches 
to the internal ear, and through them lies the course of the 
sonorous vibrations in their progress towards the auditory 
nerve. 

The small bones of the tympanum are named from their 
appearance as follows (beginning at the outermost) : the 
malleus, or hammer, attached to the membrane of the tym- 
panum ; the incus, or anvil; and the stapes, or stirrup, which 
is fixed to the oval opening in the inner ear, called the fenestra 
ovalis. The incus is thus intermediate between the other two, 
and the result of the whole is, ' a species of angular and 
jointed connecting rod between the outer and inner walls of 
the tympanic cavity, which serves to communicate vibrations 
from the membrana tympani to the fluid contained in the 
vestibule of the internal ear/ 

There are certain small muscles attached to those bones 
for the regulation of their movements. On the number of 
these muscles Anatomists are not agreed, owing to the minute- 
ness and ambiguous appearance of the fibres. As to one of 
them there is no dispute, namely, the tensor tympani, a 
muscle inserted into the handle of the malleus, and by its 
contraction drawing inwards and tightening the membrane of 
the tympanum. A second muscle, admitted by most anato- 
mists, is that named the stapedius, from its attachment to 
the stapes, or stirrup-bone, at the other end of the chain from 
the malleus. Mr. Toynbee considers the action of these two 
muscles as antagonistic. 



198 



SENSE OF HEARING. 



The internal ear, or labyrinth, ' which is the essential or 
sensory part of the organ of hearing, is contained in the petrous 
portion of the temporal bone. It is made up of two very 
different structures, known respectively as the osseous and 
membranous labyrinth/ 

(i.) ' The osseous labyrinth is lodged in the cancellated 
structure of the temporal bone, and presents, when separated 

Fig. 7 * 





from this, the appearance shown in the enlarged figure. It is 
incompletely divided into three parts, named respectively the 
vestibule, the semicircular canals, and the cochlea. They are 
lined throughout by a thin serous membrane, which secretes a 
clear fluid. 

' (2.) The membranous labyrinth is contained within the 
bony labyrinth, and, being smaller than it, a space intervenes 
between the two, which is occupied with the clear fluid just 
referred to. This structure supports the numerous minute 
ramifications of the auditory nerve, and encloses a liquid 
secretion/ 

The minute anatomy of these parts I must pass over. The 
vestibule is the central chamber of the mass, and is the portion 



* ' An enlarged view of the labyrinth from the outer side : — 1 . Vestibule. 
2. Fenestra oralis. 3. Superior semicircular canal, 4. External semicircular 
canal. 5. Posterior semicircular canal. 6. First turn of the cochlea. 7. Second 
turn. 8. Apex of cochlea. 9. Fenestra rotunda. * Ampullae of semicircular 
canal. — The smaller figure represents the osseous labyrinth of the natural 
size.' — (Quain.) 



COURSE OF THE SONOROUS WAVES IN THE EAR. 199 

of the labyrinth turned towards the tympanum, and contain- 
ing the cavities of communication above described. The 
semicircular canals are three bony tubes, situate above and 
behind the vestibule, into which they open by five apertures ; 
each tube being bent so as to form the greater part of a circle. 
The cochlea is a blunt cone, having its surface ' marked by a 
spiral groove, which gives to this part of the labyrinth some- 
what of the appearance of a spiral shell — whence its name.' 
Its interior is a spiral canal divided into two by a thin par- 
tition, deficient at the apex of the cochlea. The canal opens 
freely into the cavity of the vestibule. 

' Within the osseous labyrinth, and separated from its 
lining membrane by a liquid secretion, is a membranous 
structure, which serves to support the ultimate ramifications 
of the auditory nerve. In the vestibule and semicircular 
canals this membrane has the form of a rather complex sac> 
and encloses a fluid called the endolymph ; in the cochlea the 
analogous structure merely completes the lamina spiralis (the 
partition of the cochlea), and is covered by the membrane 
which lines the general cavity of the osseous labyrinth/ 

The labyrinth is thus to be considered as a complicated 
chamber full of liquid, and containing also a membranous 
expansion for the distribution of the nerve of hearing. Let us 
next advert to the action of these different parts in producing 
the sensations of sound. 

3. The waves of sound enter the passage of the outer ear, 
and strike the membrane of the tympanum. The structure of 
the outer ear is adapted to collect and concentrate the vibra- 
tions like an ear trumpet. The form of the shell gives it a 
reflecting surface for directing the sound inwards ; while the 
passage is believed to increase their intensity by resonance. 
Reaching the membrane of the tympanum, the beats commu- 
nicate themselves to its surface and set it a vibrating, which 
is done all the more easily that the membrane is very thin 
and light in its structure. Experiments have shown that the 
only means of receiving with effect the vibrations of the air is 
to provide a thin stretched membrane such as this. The 
vibrations of the membrane are communicated to the chain of 



200 



SENSE OF HEARING. 



bones traversing the middle ear, and connecting through the 
oval foramen with the enclosed liquid of the inner ear. By 
this means a series of beats are imparted to this liquid, which 
diffuse themselves in waves all through the passages of the 
labyrinth, and act by compressiDg the membranous labyrinth, 
and through it the imbedded fibres of the auditory nerve, 
which comjDressions are the immediate antecedent of the sen- 
sation of hearing. The character of the sensation will of 
course vary with the character of the waves, according as they 
are violent or feeble, quick or slow, simple or complex, and so 
forth. 

There is little difference of opinion as to the general course 
of the action now described. The transitions have all been 
imitated by experiments, and it has been found that the 
arrangement is a good one for bringing about the ultimate 
effect, namely, the gentle compression of the filaments of the 
nerve of hearing. No other medium could serve the final contact 
so well as a liquid, but in order to impress the liquid itself, an 
intermediate apparatus between it and the air is requisite. 
This intermediate apparatus is solid, and composed of two 
parts, the first slender and expanded, so as to be susceptible 
to the beats of the air, the second dense and contracted (the 
chain of bones), to produce a sufficiently powerful undulation 
in the liquid. The membrane once affected is able to com- 
municate vibrations to the bones, and the end of the stapes 
is able to impress the labyrinthine fluid. So far the process 
has been rendered sufficiently intelligible. 

Sonorous vibrations are also communicated in a feeble way 
from the tympanic membrane to the inner ear through the air ' 
in the tympanic cavity. The membrane of the fenestra rotunda 
is acted on by these aerial pulses, while the membrane of the 
fenestra ovalis is impinged by the stirrup bone. 

When, however, we come to inquire minutely into the 
uses of the different parts, and the meanings of the different 
complications of form and arrangement, the answer is not in 
all cases to be had. The inner ear especially, with its laby- 
rinthine windings, is a subject of great perplexity. It can 



ACTION OF THE MUSCLES OF THE EAR. 201 

easily be understood that those win dings, like the cavities of 
the nose, give a greater expansion to the membrane support- 
ing the auditory nerve, and thus iucrease the effect of the 
vibrations ; there may also be a multiplication of effect by 
resonance in the canals. Whether any other more special 
purpose is served by them has not as yet been made out. 

What would be most interesting from the point of view of 
this treatise, would be to ascertain the precise uses of the 
muscles of the ear. But this subject is unfortunately very 
obscure. There are, I am informed, three muscles whose 
existence cannot be questioned : the tensor tympani, whose 
purpose undoubtedly is, as the name signifies, to tighten the 
membrane of the tympanum ; the stapedius inserted into the 
stirrup bone, and considered by Mr. Toynbee to be antagonistic 
to the other ; and the laxator tympani minor, inserted into the 
handle of the malleus, whose action cannot be guessed with 
any probability. 

It has not been well ascertained on what occasions and 
with what effect the tensor tympani is brought into play. 
The only distinct observation on the matter is that made by 
Dr. Wollaston, namely, that when the membrane of the tym- 
panum is stretched, the ear is rendered less sensible to grave 
sounds, such as the deep notes of the organ, or the sounds of 
thunder and cannon. When therefore the ear is exposed to 
very intense sounds of the deep kind, such as the firing of 
artillery, the tensor tympani coming into play would in some 
measure deaden the effect. The action would make little or 
no difference to the hearing of acute sounds, such as the sharp 
notes of a call whistle. Probably these muscles are excited 
by the reflex action of the sounds ; possibly, also, they may 
be of the voluntary class, that is, they may come into play in 
the voluntary acts of listening and of preparing the ear to 
resist loud sounds. The only circumstance I can assign as 
determining the reflex action of the tensor tympani is simply the 
intensity of the sound. We may suppose that every sound what- 
ever brings on a reflex action to stretch the membrane, and 
the stronger the sound the greater the action. When sounds 



202 SENSE OF HEARING. 

are too loud, and of the grave kind, this tension mitigates 
them ; when too loud and acute, it either has no effect, or 
makes the evil worse. 

* Dr. Wollaston performed many experiments upon the 
effects of tension of the membrana tympani, and he found 
that deafness to grave notes was always induced, which, as 
most ordinary sounds are of a low pitch, is tantamount to a 
general deafness. Shrill sounds, however, are best heard when 
the tympanic membrane is tense. Miiller remarks, and we 
have frequently made the same observation, that the dull 
rumbling sound of carriages passing over a bridge, or of the 
firing of cannon, or of the beating of drums at a distance, 
ceases to be heard immediately on the membrana tympani 
becoming tense ; while the treading of horses upon stone 
pavement, the more shrill creaking of carriages and the rattling 
of paper, may be distinctly heard/ — Todd and Bowman, 
vol. ii. p. 95. 

4. Passing now to Sounds considered as Sensations, I 
might distinguish these into three classes ; the first would 
comprise the general effects of sound as determined by 
Quality, Intensity, and Volume or Quantity, to which all ears 
are sensitive. The second class would include Musical sounds, 
for which a susceptibility to Pitch is requisite. Lastly, there is 
the sensibility to the Direction and Articulateness of sounds ; 
on these properties depend much of the intellectual uses of 
the sense of hearing. 

5. Quality. (Emotional). This regards sounds as in 
themselves agreeable or disagreeable, apart from the intensity 
or quantity of the sonorous influence. Like sweet and bitter 
in Taste, there is a qualitative distinction of sounds into such 
as intrinsically possess the power of gratifying the sense of 
hearing, and those that give in an unmingled form the peculiar 
pain that we are capable of deriving through this organ. The 
terms, sweet, rich, mellow, are applied to the pleasing effects 
of pure sound. Instruments and voices are distinguished by 
the sweetness of their individual tones ; there is something in 
the material and mechanism of an instrument that gives a 
sweet and rich effect, apart altogether from the music of the airs 



SWEET SOUNDS. 203 

performed upon it. Other instruments and sounds have a 
grating, harsh, unpleasant tone, like bitterness in taste, or a 
stink in the nostrils. We cannot explain the cause of this 
difference in the material of sounding bodies ; we only know 
that some substances, by their texture, have a greater sweet- 
ness of note than others. Thus silver is distinguished among 
the metals ; and glass is also remarkable for pure rich tones. 
The hard woods are usually better than the soft for the con- 
struction of instruments. It is hopeless to attempt to explain 
those astonishing differences that occur between one make of 
instrument and another, or to probe the mysterious structure 
of a Cremona violin. 

This sensation of the sweet in sound I have characterised 
as the simple, pure, and proper pleasure of hearing ; a 
pleasure of great acuteness but of little massiveness. The 
acuteness of it is proportioned to the rank of the ear as a 
sensitive organ, or to the susceptibility of the mind to be 
stirred and moved through the channel of hearing'. Now in 
the generality of mankind the ear is extremely sensitive ; 
perhaps in none of the senses are we more keenly alive to 
pleasure and pain than in this, although we do not obtain 
from it that bulky enjoyment that comes through the organic 
feelings. 

There is however a great superiority in the endurableness 
of sweet sounds over the sweets of the inferior senses. In 
touch this distinction exists in the comparison with Taste and 
Smell ; in hearing there is a farther progress, and we shall 
have to note the crowning pitch of this important property 
when we come to the sense of sight. By virtue of this fact 
we can obtain from sight and hearing a larger amount of 
enjoyment within the same degree of fatigue or exhaustion, or 
before reaching the point of satiety. Hence one reason for 
terming these the ' higher senses/ 

I may remark that great sweetness of tone is not a usual 
property of the sounds about us, nor are we often exposed to 
very harsh or repulsive effects on the ear. The majority of 
actual sounds are indifferent in their emotional influence. 

Sweetness of sound, as of taste and smell, is a pure and 



204 SENSE OF HEARING. 

serene emotion ; there is nothing in it of an appetite or a 
craving so as to be a spur to the volition. 

As regards persistence in the intellect, there is a common 
superiority in sounds in general over Tastes and Smells, which 
will be alluded to at the close of our remarks upon the sense 
of hearing. By virtue of that character the pleasure of sound 
is more extended in its influence over our mental life, by 
being more realizable in idea, than the pleasures of these 
other senses. 

6. Intensity, Loudness. — Sounds may be either faint or 
loud, and as such they affect the ear differently. A faint 
gentle sound, otherwise not disagreeable, is a source of 
pleasurable stimulus to the ear. The tone of a steady breeze, 
the distant hum of a city, the rush of a rivulet, are instances 
of gentle sounds yielding pleasure to the ear disposed to listen 
to them. If we attend to the nature of this sensation, we 
shall probably consider it as not very powerful or massive, but 
as acutely or keenly felt.* It does not count for much if 
weighed in the balance with the feelings of exercise, warmth, 
&c, but it has the effect common to sonorous influences on 
susceptible ears, of setting on trains of recollection and reverie. 
It may thus originate states of excitement without being much 
in itself. 

When the sound passes from the gentle to the loud, we 
have as a matter of course a more intense stimulus. The 
sensation then becomes keen and pungent, like the action of 
ammonia on the nose, or a smart stroke on the skin. The 
rattle of carriages, the jingle of an iron work, the noise of a 



* The words ' acute' and ' keen,' which I have introduced extensively 
in the description of emotional states, are probably almost synonymous in 
their acceptation. They both serve the purpose of contrasting with the 
' massive ' or ' voluminous ' in effect ; but when I wish to indicate, at the 
same time, the extreme opposite of ' obtuseness,' or bluntness of sensibility, 
I think the word ' keen ' is rather the more expressive of the two. Hence, 
in discussing the sense of hearing, so much more sensitive, and, so to speak, 
raw, than touch, I feel disposed to use this word very liberally in my 
descriptions; although possibly many readers may feel that the term 'acute' 
really amounts to the same thing. In using both together, I indicate, as 
strongly as I can, the quality of sensitiveness as attaching to the organ in 
the special case. 



QUANTITY OR VOLUME IN SOUND. 205 

cotton mill, the ringing of bells close to the ear, the discharge 
of ordnance, are all exciting from their intensity ; to fresh and 
vigorous nerves plunged into them after quietness, these noises 
are an intense pleasure. They may be described, however, as 
a coarse excitement ; there is a great cost of tear and wear 
of nerve for the actual satisfaction. 

The intensity rising beyond a certain pitch turns to pain ; 
and in proportion to the keenness of the feeling of the 
pleasurable, is the repulsion of the painful state of the over- 
excited nerves. The screeching of a parrot-house, the shrill 
barking of the smaller species of dogs, the whistling in the 
fingers practised by boys in the streets, the screaming of 
infants, are instances of painful pungency. It is in pain that 
the delicacy of the ear makes itself most apparent ; the 
annoyance of a fatigued and jaded ear is very difficult to 
overcome, and the agony of acute suffering arising from 
sounds, in certain disorders of the ear, is known to be of the 
most unendurable kind. 

The suddenness of sounds is a feature allied with intensity, 
and marks a contrast between two successive states of nerve, 
one little excited, and the other much. In producing anger, 
terror, and mental discomposure, a sudden sound is very 
effective ; in this resembling an unexpected shock or check to 
the movements of the body, which has already been adverted 
to as causing a peculiar and painful emotion. 

7. Volume or Quantity. — This means the sound coming 
from a sounding mass of great surface or extent. The waves 
of the 'many sounding sea/ the thundery discharge, the 
howling winds, are voluminous sounds. A sound echoed from 
many sides is made voluminous. The shouts of a great mul- 
titude is a powerful instance of the voluminous. Grave 
sounds, inasmuch as they require a larger instrument, are 
comparatively voluminous. 

This multiplication of sounds, without increase of individual 
intensity, has a very powerful effect on the ear. The stimulus 
is greatly increased, but not fatiguingly so. The sensation is 
extended in volume and amount without becoming pungent ; 
like the difference between a warm bath and the immersion 



206 SENSE OF HEAKING. 

of the feet in tepid water. Apart from music, the greatest 
pleasure that sound can give is derived from voluminous 
effects. 

8. Pitch, or Tune. — This is the musical character of 
sounds. By it is meant the acuteness or graveness of the 
sound, as determined by the ear, and this is found to depend 
on the rapidity of vibration of the sounding body, or the 
number of vibrations performed in a given time. Most ears 
can mark a difference between two sounds differing in acute- 
ness or pitch : those that cannot do so are incapable of music. 
The gravest sound audible to the human ear is stated by the 
generality of experimenters at 32 vibrations per second; the 
limit of acuteness is various for different individuals, the highest 
estimate is 73,000 vibrations in the second. The cry of a bat 
is so acute as to pass out of the hearing of many persons. 
The extreme audible range would amount to between nine 
and ten octaves. 

The perception of pitch must resolve itself into the discri- 
mination by the nerve of the frequency of the pulses or 
compressions given to it by the surrounding liquid of the 
labyrinth, set in motion through the bones and membrane of 
the tympanum. The auditory nerve would require to propa- 
gate to the brain a different form of excitement according as 
the beats are few or many ; and in order to great delicacy of 
ear, extremely minute differences of pitch would have to 
impress themselves discriminatively on the fibres. We may 
suppose that the quality of the membrane of the tympanum 
itself, and of the connecting chain of bones, may be very 
unequal as regards the transmission of the beats of the air ; in 
some ears these being imparted to the labyrinth with more 
precision than in others; but the difference between an ear 
that is musical and one that is not, cannot be other than a 
difference in the organization of the auditory nerves and in 
the connected centres in the brain. 

An ear sensible to pitch is also sensible to the difference 
between a musical sound and a noise ; the one having a sus- 
tained note, the other being a jumble of innumerable notes. 
Such an ear derives pleasure from the equal tone, while from 



PITCH — WAXING AND WANING SOUNDS. 207 

the other none, or worse than none is derived. A musical 
note is in itself a harmony ; being the equal timing of suc- 
cessive vibrations or pulses. It is, in a minute or microsco- 
pical subdivision, the same effect as equality of intervals or 
time in a musical performance; although the one may be 
a thousand beats per second, the other not more than two in 
the same time. It is a keen, lively, stirring sensation of 
pleasure, more refined and exquisite than mere pungency, or 
the effect of loudness ; and is the basis or foundation of one of 
the great pleasure-giving arts of life. 

9. The vjaxing and leaning of sound. The gradual in- 
crease or diminution of the loudness of a sound, is one of the 
effects introduced into musical composition, owing to the 
power it has to excite keen and intense emotion. The howl- 
ing of the wind has sometimes this character, and produces a 
deep impression upon all minds sensitive to sound. The dying 
away of sound is perhaps the more exciting of the two effects ; 
' that music hath a dying fall/ I think it not unlikely, that 
a muscular effect enters into this sensation: the gradually 
increased or relaxed tension of the muscles of the ear being a 
probable accompaniment of the increase or diminution of 
loudness. On this supposition, the influence on the mind 
would be one of the very delicate effects of movement. From 
the character of the sensation itself, I think that muscular 
motions would account for it in part; but I am not prepared 
to say that the heightened or lower intensity of the pulses on 
the auditory nerve would not suffice to produce the effect. 
Be this as it may, the sensation itself is powerful and stir- 
ring ; and wakens up an intense current of emotion ; in 
general, I believe, of a very solemnising kind. That such is 
its usual character is testified by the use made of the tempest 
howl or moan in poetic compositions. 

The waxing and waning of a sound in acuteness or pitch 
is still more properly a musical effect. To pass from one note 
to another by imperceptible change, is the essence of ' sing- 
song' or ' whine/ both in speech and music ; and is apt to 
degenerate into a very coarse effect, such as good taste repu- 
diates; a circumstance proving how powerful the action is. 



208 SENSE OF HEARING. 

The mixture of the two effects of waning or waxing loudness 
and pitch is doubtless the most common, both in natural 
sounds, in music, and in speech. In the notes of birds we 
may trace this effect; in the execution of accomplished 
singers, in the violin and other instruments, and in the 
cadences of a musical orator, we may likewise observe it: in 
all cases telling powerfully ; the plaudits of an admiring 
audience leave no doubt as to its influence in stirring up some 
favourite and powerful emotion. 

10. Complexity is a notable character of sounds, yielding 
peculiar sensations of various kinds. The sounds concurring 
upon the ear at the same moment may be many or few. The 
membrane of the tympanum may be affected by several series 
of undulations, which will be transmitted with all their pri- 
mitive distinctness to the fibres of the nerve of hearing; 
and the nerve may also transmit them without confusion to 
the ganglionic centres. But in the consciousness the distinct- 
ness is not well preserved; some degree of fusion takes place; 
and this may be grateful or otherwise according to the nature 
of the separate sounds. Sometimes a multitude of sounds 
falling upon the ear together, are perfectly indifferent to one 
another, as in the ordinary din of a market-place, or a crowded 
city. At other times a most painful action ensues from the 
confluence of sounds, as in the jarring sounds of an instrument 
out of tune. This we call a discord. The effect is a feeling 
of acute pain, intense in proportion to the musical sensibility 
of the ear. Discords may be produced more unendurable 
than a surgical operation, the sensibility of the ear itself 
being more keen than the tissues of organic life. Some of 
the intensely disagreeable sounds, as the well-known sound 
of sharpening a saw, are probably discords ; the effect is 
apparently much more intolerable than the mere shrillness 
would bring about. On this, however, I cannot speak with 
certainty. 

The opposite of discord is harmony, or the combination 
aimed at in music. The sounds that harmonize are well 
known to be related to one another numerically in the 
number of their vibrations. Of the mental effects of har- 



CLEARNESS — QUALITY — DIRECTION. 209 

monies I should have to speak at length if I were discussing 
the Emotions of Art in general. 

ii. Clearness, or purity. — A clear sound is one that has a 
distinct, uniform character, and is not choked or encumbered 
with confusing ingredients. Clearness is a property that 
affects both the perception of meaning and the pleasure of 
music. A clear-toned instrument is one that yields, unmixed 
and in perfection, the notes that the performer aims at pro- 
ducing. The perception of tone or pitch must needs depend 
very much on the clearness of the sound. In instruments, 
the purity varies with the substance. Silver, among the 
metals, is clear-toned. Glass, from the uniformity of its 
texture, is noted for this quality. In instruments of wood, a 
hard and uniform tissue is indispensable. In the human 
voice musical clearness and articulate clearness depend upon 
totally different qualities. The first arises from the structure 
of the larynx and the molecular nature of the resonant skull ; 
the second depends upon the sharpness and suddenness of the 
articulate actions of the mouth. In every kind of expression 
clearness is a cardinal virtue ; the merit of musical or articu- 
late performances must rise or fall according as the effect 
intended stands out apart from other effects not intended. 

12. Quality (Intellectual or Discriminative). — This relates 
to the feeling of difference, that difference of material gives, 
whereby we discriminate between one substance and another, 
as in the ring of a shilling or a sovereign, and in the difference 
already alluded to between one person's voice and another. 
This discriminativeness of the ear, corresponding to a dis- 
tinctiveness of sonorous quality in bodies, is of the greatest 
consequence in our daily operations. 

13. Direction. — This is a purely intellectual sensation, in 
other words, is of importance as leading us to perceive the 
situation of the objects of the outer world whence the sound 
takes its rise. 

Some have supposed that the labyrinthine apparatus is 
intended to give us the perception of distance at once and 
independent of experience. This view has been put forth by 
Professor Wheatstone. But so far as I can judge of the 

P 



210 SENSE OF HEARING. 

matter, I prefer the explanation that refers this perception 
entirely to experience. The following extract from Longet 
expresses what I mean : — 

' With regard to the direction of the sonorous waves we 
can at present only say, that the knowledge of it is owing to 
a process of reasoning applied to the sensation. Thus, we 
hear distinctly a sound emanating from a given point, what- 
ever be the position of the head; but the ear being able to 
judge of slight differences in the intensity of sounds, we 
remark that, in certain positions of the head, the sound seems 
stronger. We are hence led to place our head in one fixed 
position as regards the sounding body. But our sight tells 
what is this direction of most perfect hearing ; and we then 
apply the observation made on bodies that we can see to those 
that are not seen/ 

The sense of direction is by no means very delicate, even 
after being educated to the full. We can readily judge 
whether a voice be before or behind, right or left, up or 
clown; but if we were to stand opposite to a row of persons, 
at a distance, say, of ten feet, we should not be able, I appre- 
hend, to say which one emitted a sound. This confusion is 
well known to schoolmasters. So it is next to impossible t*o 
find out a skylark in the air from the sound of its song. 

The combined action of the two ears undoubtedly favours 
the perception of direction of sound very materially. A person 
who has lost the hearing on one side, is usually unable to say 
whether a sound is before or behind. The change of effect 
produced by a slight rotation of the head, is such as to 
indicate direction to the mind. For while the sound becomes 
more perceptible on one ear, — the ear turned to face the 
object more directly, — the sound in the other ear is to the 
same degree obscured. When the head is so placed, after 
various trials, that the greatest force of sensation is felt on 
the right ear, and the least on the left, we then infer that the 
sounding body is away to the right; when the two effects are 
equal, and when any movement of the head makes them 
unequal, we judge the sound to be either right in front, or 



DISTANCE — ARTICULATE FORM. 211 

behind ; and we can further discriminate so as to determine 
between these two suppositions. 

14. The perception of distance can result from nothing 
but experience. I quote again from Longet. ' As soon as the 
organ presents a sensibility and a development sufficient for 
discerning easily the relative intensity of two consecutive 
sounds, nothing farther is necessary in order to acquire the 
notions of distance and direction of the body from which the 
sonorous waves emanate. In fact, if a sound is already known 
to us, as in the case of the human voice, or an instrument, 
we judge of its distance by the feebleness of its impression 
upon the nerve of hearing ; if the sound is one whose inten- 
sity, at a given distance, is unknown, as, for example, thunder, 
we suppose it nearer according as it is louder/ 

15. Articulate form. — This quality relates almost exclu- 
sively to the effect produced by the sounds issuing from the 
human voice, as modified by the shape of the mouth during 
their utterance. By widening the mouth during the emission 
of sound a broad vowel, ah, is sounded ; and we have a very 
distinct feeling of the difference between this sound and the 
sound issuing from a contracted mouth, as in the vowel u of 
' put/ Whether this difference is due solely to the greater 
area or expansion of the stream of sound in one case, I cannot 
pretend to say ; but it is probable that this must be looked 
upon as a leading circumstance. We have already seen that 
sounds affect us differently according to their volume, or the 
extent of sounding surface ; and the present case may repose 
in part upon this distinction. When a number of sounds 
proceed together to the ear, we may have every variety of per- 
ception according as the individual sounds are varied ; thus 
there is something articulate in the uproar of a multitude 
from the waving of the sound to and fro, now from one 
corner, now from another, and again from the whole in chorus. 
When a vowel sound emanates from the mouth, the thickness 
and shape of the column of sound are modified, and this 
modification has a characteristic influence upon the ear, owing 
to the distinction felt between a wide and narrow origin of 

p 2 



212 SENSE OF HEARING. 

sound. So much as regards the vowels. In the consonants, 
the discrimination must hinge upon something different from 
the area and shape of the stream as diffused from the mouth. 
It is easy to understand the difference of the labials or dentals 
according as they are mute or vocal, the difference between 
p and b, or between t and d ; what is to be explained is the 
difference in the mutes, namely, p, t, k, which are produced by 
the abrupt opening or closure of the lips, the teeth, and the 
throat respectively, these two last being closed by the tongue ; 
the difference in short between the articulations ap, at, ah The 
question is, what is the peculiarity in the formation of those 
sounds that makes them felt as different to every ear ? 
We must confess that there is no adequate reply to this 
question ; there appears to me to be somewhat of the same 
obscurity here as in the timbre or quality of sound issuing 
from different substances or voices. It seems at first sight not 
more wonderful that we should discriminate between labial, 
dental, and guttural sounds, than that we should discriminate 
between one man's articulation and another ; but the difficulty 
is not the same. It is likely that the difference lies in the 
mode of formation of the sound by the stroke of the parts : in 
the lips the blow seems softer and less abrupt, in the back 
part of the palate it is much harder ; there we can produce a 
sharp click that could not be made to arise between two soft 
substances like the lips. Whether or not some other per- 
manent difference holds between those sounds arising from the 
difference of locality of the opening and closure, I will not 
endeavour to decide. 

Some people are distinguished by their susceptibility to 
articulate sounds, a kind of susceptibility or discrimination 
that makes an ear for language, as the discrimination of pitch 
makes a musical ear. There appears to be no necessary con- 
nexion between the two gifts, and experience shows that one 
may exist in a high degree along with deficiency in the other. 
At the same time, I believe that a good ear will for the most 
part be good for all the points of hearing. The sense of pitch 
is probably the least bound up with other sensibilities. 

As a general rule, the emotional sensibility of any sense 



OBJECTS OF SIGHT. 213 

bears no relation to the intellectual sensibility. An ear may 
be very inflammable to exciting effects of sound, and may at 
the same time be very dull to all those differences of quality 
and degree that constitute the meaning of sounds as well as 
their delicate harmonies. It is like the difference to the eye 
between a bonfire and a landscape, between the glare of noon 
and an algebraical formula. 

1 6. The duration of an impression of sound can be appre- 
ciated by noting at what intervals a succession of beats seems 
an uninterrupted stream of sound. This makes, in fact, the 
inferior limit of the audibility of sounds. From the experi- 
ments of Savart, it would appear that a series of beats begins 
to be felt as continuous when they number from ten to twelve 
in a second ; so that the impression of each must continue not 
less than the tenth part of a second. 

SENSE OF SIGHT. 

i. The objects of sight include nearly all material bodies. 
Their visibility depends on their being acted on by Light, the 
most inscrutable of natural agents. Certain bodies, such as 
the Sun, the Stars, flame, solids at a high temperature, give 
origin to rays of light, and are called self-luminous. Other 
bodies, as the Moon, Planets, and the greater number of ter- 
restrial surfaces, are visible only by reflecting the rays they 
receive from the self-luminous class. 

The reflection of light is of two sorts : mirror reflection, 
which merely reveals the body that the light comes from ; and 
reflection of visibility, which pictures the reflecting surface. In 
this last mode of reflection the light is broken up and emitted in 
all directions exactly as from a self-luminous original. Visible 
surfaces receiving light from the sun have thus the power of 
absorbing and reissuing it, while a mirror simply gives a new 
direction to the rays. When we look at a picture in a bad 
light, we find that the rays of reflection overpower the rays 
arising from the coloured surface of the picture, and conse- 
quently the picture is imperfectly seen. 

As regards vision, bodies are either opaque or transparent. 



214 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

There is a scale of degrees from the most perfect opacity, as 
in a piece of clay, to the most perfect transparency, as in air. 
According as bodies become transparent they cease to be 
visible. 

The transparency of air is not absolutely perfect ; that is 
to say, light in passing through the atmosphere is to a certain 
small extent arrested, and a portion reflected, so as to make 
the mass faintly visible to the eye. When we look up into 
the sky through a cloudless atmosphere, all the illumination 
received from the surface is light reflected by the atmo- 
sphere itself. Liquids are still less transparent ; although 
they transmit light so as to show objects beyond them, they 
also reflect a sufficient portion to be themselves visible. Light 
falling upon the surface of water is dealt with in three dif- 
ferent ways. One portion passes through, a second is reflected 
as from a mirror, a third very small portion is absorbed and 
radiated anew, so as to make the surface visible as a surface. 
The same threefold action obtains in transparent solids, as 
glass, crystal, &c. It is to be remarked of solid bodies that 
they are almost all transparent to a certain small depth, as 
shown by holding up their plates or laminse to the light. 
Gold leaf, for example, permits the passage of light ; and any 
other metal, if similarly attenuated, would show the same 
effect. There is, however, in this case, an important differ- 
ence to be noted, inasmuch as objects are not distinctly seen, 
although light is transmitted ; hence the name ' translucent' is 
applied to the case to distinguish it from proper transparency. 
There may be something more than a difference of degree 
between the two actions. 

Opaque bodies may diffuse much light or little : some 
substances, such as chalk and sea foam, emit a large body of 
light ; charcoal is remarkable for absorbing without re-emission 
the sun's rays. This is the ordinary, perhaps not the full, 
explanation of white and black, the one implying a surface 
which emits a large portion of the rays of visibility, the other 
few or none. 

Besides that difference of action which makes white and 
black, and the intermediate shades of grey, there is a difference 



APPENDAGES OF THE EYE. 215 

in the texture of surfaces, giving birth to what we recognise 
as colour. Upon what peculiarity of surface the difference 
between, for example, red and blue, depends, Ave cannot at 
present explain. But this fact of colour is one among the 
many distinctions presented by the various materials of the 
globe. Along with colour a substance may have more or less 
of the property that decides between white and black, namely, 
copiousness of radiation. This makes richness of colour, as in 
the difference between new and faded colours, between turkey 
red and dull brick clay of a similar hue. 

Bodies that are translucent to a certain depth have from 
that circumstance a distinct appearance, named their lustre. 
The effect of this property on the sense I shall discuss when 
we come to the Sensations of Sight 

Mineral bodies present all varieties of light, colour, and 
lustre, but the prevailing tone of rocks and soils is some shade 
of grey. The reddish tint of clays and sandstones is chiefly 
due to the prevalence of iron. Vegetation }uelds the green- 
ness of the leaf, and the variegated tints of the flower. Animal 
bodies present new and distinct varieties. 

2. We come next to consider the organ of sight, the Eye. 

'Besides the structures which compose the globe of the 
eye, and constitute it an optical instrument, there are certain 
external accessory parts, which protect that organ, and are in- 
timately connected with the proper performance of its functions. 
These are known as the ' appendages of the eye/ (they have 
been named likewise tutamina oculi) ; and they include the 
eyebrows, the eyelids, the organs for secreting the sebaceous 
(or oily) matter, and the tears, together with the canals by 
which the latter fluid is conveyed to the nose/ 

•' The eyebrows are arched ridges, surmounting on each 
side the upper border of the orbit, and forming a boundary 
between the forehead and the upper eyelid. They consist of thick 
integument, studded with stiff, obliquely set hairs, under which 
lies some fat, with part of the two muscles named respectively 
the orbicular muscle of the eyelids and the corrugator of the 
eyebrowa' By this last-named muscle the eyebrows are 
drawn together, and at the same time downwards, so as to give 



216 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

the frowning appearance of the eye ; the opposite action of 
lifting and separating the eyebrows is performed by a muscle 
lying beneath the skin of the head termed theoccipito-frontalis. 
In regulating the admission of light to the eye, and in the 
expression of the passions, these two muscles are called into 
play ; the one is stimulated in various forms of pain and dis- 
pleasure, the other in an opposite class of feelings. 

' The eyelids are two thin moveable folds placed in front 
of each eye, and calculated to conceal it, or leave it exposed, 
as occasion may require. The upper lid is larger and more 
moveable than the lower, and has a muscle (levator palpebras 
superioris) exclusively intended for its elevation. Descending 
below the middle of the eye, the upper lid covers the trans- 
parent part of the organ ; and the eye is opened, or rather 
the lids are separated, by the elevation of the upper one 
under the influence of the muscle referred to. The eyelids 
are joined at the outer and inner angles of the eye ; the 
interval between the angles varies in length in different 
persons, and, according to its extent, (the size of the globe 
being nearly the same,) gives the appearance of a larger or a 
smaller eye. At the outer angle, which is more acute than 
the inner, the lids are in close contact with the eyeball ; but 
at the inner angle, the caruncula lachrymalis (a small red 
conical body) intervenes. The free margins of the lids are 
straight, so that they leave between them, when approxi- 
mated, merely a transverse chink. The greater part of the 
edge is flattened, but towards the inner angle it is rounded 
off for a short space ; and where the two differently formed 
parts join, there exists on each lid a slight conical elevation, 
the apex of which is pierced by the aperture of the corre- 
sponding lachrymal duct/ — Quain, p. 903. 

The lachrymal apparatus is constituted by the following 
assemblage of parts — viz., the gland by which the tears are 
secreted at the outer side of the orbit ; the two canals into 
which the fluid is received near the inner angles ; and the sac 
with the duct continued from it, through which the tears pass 
to the interior of the nose. The description of these parts 
need not be quoted in detail here. Suffice it to say that the 



GLOBE OF THE EYE. 217 

tears are secreted by the lachrymal gland, and poured out 
from the eyelids upon the eyeball ; the washings afterwards 
running into the lachrymal sac, and thence away by the nose. 

The parts now dwelt upon are not so much concerned in 
vision, as in expression and other functions auxiliary to vision. 
Though not directly bearing on the object of the present 
section, they will be of importance when we come to consider 
the emotions and their outward display. From them we now 
turn to the ball or globe of the eye. 

' The globe, or ball of the eye, is placed in the fore part of 
the orbital cavity, fixed principally by its connexion with the 
optic nerve behind, and the muscles with the eyelids in front, 
but capable of changing its position within certain limits. 
The recti and obliqui muscles closely surround the greater 
part of the eyeball ; the lids, with the caruncle and its semilunar 
membrane, are in contact with it in front ; and behind, it is 
supported by a quantity of loose fat. The form of the eye- 
ball is irregularly spheroidal ; and, when viewed in profile, is 
found to be composed of segments of two spheres, of which 
the anterior is the smaller and more prominent ; hence the 
diameter taken from before backwards exceeds the transverse 
diameter by about a line. The segment of the larger sphere 
corresponds to the sclerotic coat, and the portion of the smaller 
sphere to the cornea/ 

' Except when certain muscles are in action, the axes of 
the eyes are nearly parallel ; the optic nerves, on the contrary, 
diverge considerably from one another, and consequently each 
nerve enters the corresponding eye a little to the inner or 
nasal side of the axis of the globe. 

' The eyeball is composed of several investing membranes, 
concentrically arranged, and of certain fluid and solid parts 
contained within them. The membranes, not one of which 
forms a complete coat to the eye, are the conjunctiva, sclerotica, 
cornea, choroid, iris, retina, membrane of the aqueous humour, 
capsule of the lens, and hyaloid membrane. The parts 
enclosed are the aqueous and vitreous humours, and the 
crystalline lens.' 

The conjunctiva is more an appendage of the eye than a 



218 



SENSE OF SIGHT. 



portion of the globe. It is a thin, transparent membrane 
covering only the front or visible portion of the ball, and 



Fig. 8 * 



? D 




reflected on it from the interior of the eyelids, of which it is 
the lining mucous membrane. Over the clear and bulging 
portion of the eye it is perfectly transparent, and adheres 
closely to the surface ; on the parts surrounding the clear 



* Horizontal section of the right eye, with two of the muscles, — the 
external and internal recti, — and the optic nerve, a. Aqueous humour. 
b. Crystalline lens. c. Vitreous humour, i. Conjunctiva. 2. Sclerotica. 
3. Cornea. 4. Choroid. 5. Canal of Fontana. 6. Ciliary processes. 7. Iris. 
8. Retina. 9. Hyaloid membrane. 10. Zone of Zinn, or ciliary processes 
of the hyaloid. 11 Membrane of aqueous humour. — (Whabton Jomss 
on tlieEye.) 



SCLEROTICA — CORNEA — CHOROID. 219 

portion it is less transparent, and contains a few straggling 
blood-vessels, which are seen as red streaks on the white of the 
eye. 

' The sclerotic, one of the most complete of the tunics of 
the eye, and that on which the maintenance of the form of the 
organ chiefly depends, is a strong, opaque, unyielding, fibrous 
structure, composed of bundles of strong white fibres, which 
interlace with one another in all directions. The membrane 
covers about four-fifths of the eyeball, leaving a large opening 
in front, which is occupied by the transparent cornea, and a 
smaller aperture behind for the entrance of the optic nerve. 
The sclerotic is thickest at the back part of the eye, and 
thinnest in front/ 

' The cornea is a transparent structure, occupying the 
aperture left in the fore part of the sclerotic, and forming about 
one-fifth of the surface of the globe of the eye/ The two 
together complete the encasement of the eye, and no other 
portion is employed for the mere purpose of maintaining the 
form and rigidity of the ball. 

Spread over the inner surface of the sclerotic lie two other 
membranous expansions, likewise termed coats or tunics, but 
of totally different nature and properties. Next the sclerotic 
is tne choroid coat, which is a membrane of a black or deep- 
brown colour, lining the whole of the chamber up to the union 
of the sclerotic with the cornea, and then extending inwards 
as a ring stretching across the eye. It also is pierced behind 
by the optic nerve. 

The choroid coat is an extremely vascular structure — that 
is to say, it is composed of a dense mass of blood vessels, which 
lie in two layers, the outermost of the two being the veins, 
and the other the arteries. Inside of these two vascular 
expansions is the layer containing the black pigment which 
gives to the coat its colour, and which it is the object of the 
numerous blood vessels to keep supplied. The pigment is 
enclosed in the cells of a membrane, and these cells are packed 
very closely together, and are about the thousandth part of an 
inch in diameter. Each cell has a transparent point in its 
centre, surrounded by a dark margin. 



220 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

Within the choroid, and lining its surface, is the retina, 
which is a nervous expansion branching out from the optic 
nerve, and covering the interior chamber of the eye with a 
fine transparent network as far as the angle where the 
choroid bends inward to form the circular ring above-men- 
tioned. The retina is a very delicate membrane, of almost a 
pulpy nature, and but loosely attached, although lying close, to 
the blackened surface of the choroid. In the middle of the back 
of the eye, and in a line with the axis of the eyeball, is a round 
yellow spot, about a line or a line and a half in diameter (y 1 ^ or | 
of an inch), and in the centre of this spot is what appears like 
a minute hole, called the foramen of Soemmering. About a 
fifth of an inch from the inner or nasal side of the yellow 
spot is a flattened circular papilla corresponding with the 
place where the optic nerve pierces the choroid coat. 

The retina is a compound membrane, consisting of three 
distinct layers, only one of three, the middle layer, being made 
up of purely nervous matter. The outer layer, in contact 
with the choroid, termed the membrane of Jacob, is made 
up of small columns or rods standing perpendicular to the 
surface, and each sharpened to a point at their outer ex- 
tremities. The columns are of two different kinds, the 
one being smaller and more numerous than the other. 
The small rods are solid, six-sided bodies, grouped round 
the larger, these last being also the shorter of the two, and 
cleft at the point where they touch the choroid. Each one 
of the pigment cells of the choroid (of which there are about a 
million to the inch) receives as many as six or eight of the 
larger cleft twin cones, with the smaller single rods grouped 
about them ; consequently the diameter of the smaller bodies 
must be only a fraction of the thousandth part of an inch. 

The middle layer of the retina is the proper nervous 
portion. This is made up of radiating nervous fibres pro- 
ceeding from the optic nerve, and spreading over the inner 
chamber of the eye. The fibres become more slender and 
spread more apart as they approach towards their termination 
in front. On both sides of the nervous expansion there are 
layers of nerve cells or vesicles, being the kind of substance com- 



RETINA — IRIS. 221 

posing the grey matter of the brain, and occurring also at 
the terminations of the nerves of special sense. The inner 
ends of the rods that make up the membrane of Jacob are 
therefore in contact, not with nervous fibres, but with nerve 
cells. 

The innermost of the three fibres of the retina is the 
vascular layer, or the network of arteries and veins for sup- 
plying blood to the nervous portion.* 

Before pointing out the different bodies that make up the 
bulk of the eye, and enable it to act as an optic lens, I must 
call attention to several other substances of a membranous or 
fibrous character lying under the cornea and near the junction 
with the sclerotic coat. The first of these is a narrow circular 
band, of a greyish- white colour, close behind the junction 
above-named. The foremost margin, the thicker of the two, 
gives attachment to the circular curtain called the iris. The 
thinner and posterior margin is blended with the choroid coat, 
which here prolongs itself inwards in a series of radiated folds 
called the ciliary processes. The band, or ligament, thus 
giving the two-fold attachment to the iris and the choroid is 
called the ciliary ligament. The ciliary processes lie behind 
the iris, and make a black, wrinkled, narrow rim, concealed 
from external view. 

'The iris may rightly be regarded as a process of the 
choroid ; it is continuous with it, although of a modified 
structure. It forms a vertical curtain, stretched in the aqueous 
humour before the lens, and perforated for the transmission of 
light. It is attached all round at the junction of the sclerotic 
and the cornea, so near indeed to the latter that its anterior 
surface becomes continuous with the posterior elastic lamina/ 
' The anterior surface of the iris has a brilliant lustre, and is 
marked by lines accurately described by Dr. Jacob, taking a 
more or less direct course towards the pupil. These lines are 
important as being indicative of a fibrous structure/ When 
the pupil is contracted, these converging fibres are stretched ; 



* For a minute description of the retina, see the ' Eye,' in Todd and 
Bowman's Physiology. 



222 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

when it is dilated, they are thrown more or less into zigzags. 
The pupil is nearly circular, and is situated rather to the inner 
side of the centre of the iris. By the movements of the iris it 
is dilated or contracted, so as to admit more or less light to 
the interior; and its diameter under these circumstances may 
vary from about 2V to ¥ °f an mcn -' — Todd and Bowman, 
Vol. II. p. 25. 

The iris is thus to be considered as a muscular structure, 
its fibres being of the unstriped variety, or of the kind that 
prevail among the involuntary muscles, as the muscular fibres 
of the intestine. It is abundantly supplied with nerves. 
While the radiating fibres above described serve to dilate the 
pupil, a second class of fibres, arranged in circles round the 
opening and best seen at the inner margin and behind, operate 
in contracting it. The action is purely reflex, and is regulated 
by the intensity of the light. In the dark, or in a very faint 
light, the dilating fibres are tense and contracted to the 
full, making the pupil very wide. The stimulus of light brings 
the circular or contracting fibres into play by a reflex or un- 
conscious action, and contracts the opening. The changes 
thus effected are useful in adapting the eye to different lights, 
admitting a larger quantity with a feeble light, and a smaller 
quantity with one that is too strong. When this reflex power 
of adaptation reaches its limit, and the brilliancy is still too 
great, we then put forth the voluntary efforts of closing the 
eye, or turning the head away from the object. 

Behind the ciliary ligament, and covering the outside of 
the ciliary processes is a greyish, semi-transparent structure, 
known as the ciliary muscle. ' It belongs to the unstriped 
variety of muscle, and its fibres appear to radiate backwards 
from the junction of the sclerotic and cornea, and to lose 
themselves on the outer surface of the ciliary body. The 
ciliary muscle must have the effect of advancing the ciliary 
processes, and with them the lens, towards the cornea. The 
muscular nature of this structure is confirmed by its anatomy 
in birds, where it is largely developed, as noticed by Sir P. 
Crampton.' — Todd and Bowman, II. 27. 

A peculiar interest has come to attach to this muscle from 



HUMOURS OF THE EYE. 223 

its supposed action in the ill-understood operation of adapting 
the eye to objects at different distances. 

Passing now from the coats of the eye to the substance, we 
find three humours, or transparent masses occupying it in 
the following order : in the front is the aqueous humour; next, 
the crystalline lens; and backmost the vitreous humour. 

The aqueous or watery humour is a clear, watery liquid 
lying under the cornea in front, and bounded behind by the 
crystalline lens and the folds of the ciliary processes. This 
humour is very nearly pure water, containing in solution a 
small quantity of common salt and albumen ; and is enclosed 
in a membrane which is in contact with the inner surface of 
the cornea in front and the ciliary processes and lens behind. 
The liquid is partly before and partly behind the iris. 

The vitreous or glassy humour lies behind the crystalline 
lens, and occupies the entire posterior chamber of the eye, being 
about two-thirds of the whole. It consists of a clear, thin fluid 
enclosed in a membrane, which membrane not merely sur- 
rounds it, but radiates inwards into its substance like the 
partitions of an orange, so as to make up a half- solid gelatinous 
body — the vitreous body, or posterior lens of the eye. These 
partitions are very numerous, and point to the axis of the eye, 
but do not reach to it ; and consequently there is a central 
cylinder passing from front to back, composed only of the 
fluid of the body. The form of the vitreous body is convex 
behind, while before there is a deep cup-shaped depression for 
receiving the crystalline lens. The membrane that surrounds 
it on all sides, as well as entering into the interior, has a 
twofold connexion in front ; it doubles so as to receive the 
crystalline lens between its folds, and it unites with the ciliary 
processes, which surround the lens without reaching its border. 
Thus the partition between the aqueous humour in front and 
the vitreous humour behind is made up of three successive 
portions enclosing one another ; the wrinkled black ring of the 
ciliary processes outermost ; within this a ring of the doubled 
membrane of the vitreous humour ; and inmost of all the 
crystalline lens, enclosed between the two folds of the membrane, 

The crystalline lens is a transparent solid lens, double 



224 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

convex in its form, but more rounded behind than before. It 
is suspended between the aqueous and vitreous humours in 
the manner already described. Its convexity in front ap- 
proaches very near the curtain of the iris stretched in front of 
it. The lens is enclosed in a capsule, and of this the front 
portion is thick, firm, and horny, while the portion on the 
back is thin and membranous, adhering firmly to the mem- 
brane of the vitreous humour. The substance of the lens 
varies in its character ; the outside portion is soft and gela- 
tinous ; beneath this is a firmer layer ; and in the centre is 
the hardest part, called the nucleus. It is supplied with 
blood vessels in the edges, but none appear to penetrate within 
except in a very early stage of life. It undergoes altogether 
a great change during the development of the individual. 
In the foetus it is nearly spherical, and it is not perfectly 
transparent; in mature life it is of the form and character 
described above ; while in old age it becomes flattened on 
both surfaces, loses its transparency, and increases in toughness 
and density. 

Of the six muscles of the eye, four are called recti or 
straight, and two oblique. The four recti muscles arise from 
the bony socket in which the eye is placed, around the 
opening where the optic nerve enters from the brain, and are 
all inserted in the anterior external surface of the eyeball, 
their attachments being respectively on the upper, under, 
outer, and inner edges of the sclerotic. The superior oblique 
or trochlear muscle arises close by the origin of the superior 
straight muscle, and, passing forward to a loop of cartilage, 
its tendon passes through the loop, and is reflected back, and 
inserted on the upper posterior surface of the eyeball. The 
inferior oblique muscle arises from the internal inferior angle 
of the fore part of the orbit, and is inserted into the internal 
inferior surface of the eyeball, behind the middle of the ball. 

The motions of the eyeball that would be caused by the 
contractions of any of these muscles are not difficult to trace. 
The inferior muscle, by its contraction, will make the ball 
revolve so .as to look downwards; the superior straight muscle 
will make it look upwards. The internal and external recti 



. 



MUSCLES OF THE EYE. 225 

v.ill give it their respective directions, the one inward, the 
other outward. The action of the trochlear muscle is peculiar. 
Inasmuch as it is reflected backwards to be inserted in the 
globe of the eye, it will turn the eyeball downwards and out- 
wards — that is, the eye would, by its action, look obliquely 
downwards and outwards. This muscle tends also to draw 
the ball of the eye a little forward, or to make it protrude. 
The inferior oblique muscle having its origin in the fore part 
of the orbit, and its insertion in the inner side of the eyeball, 
will, by its contraction, also draw the eye forward, and turn it 
upwards and inwards. 

The four recti muscles are the voluntary muscles princi- 
pally engaged in moving the eye for the purposes of vision. 
By means of them each ball can be made to sweep round 
over the whole field of view, and the two eyes converged to 
suit near or far objects. The oblique muscles probably assist 
in the same functions; acting together they would draw the 
eyes inward, or converge the two axes. But the exact occa- 
sions of bringing these oblique muscles into play are not 
agreed upon by physiologists. That they are voluntary 
muscles like the others seems certain; but it has been sup- 
posed that they act sometimes involuntarily. This is parti- 
cularly the case with the inferior oblique; to it is ascribed the 
usual position of the eyes in sleep, when they are turned 
upwards and inwards. In winking, also, there is an involun- 
tary upward movement of the eyeball, which may be due to 
this muscle. The other oblique muscle, the trochlear, has 
been called the pathetic muscle, on the supposition of its 
being concerned in the appearances of the eye under pathetic 
emotion, and in laughter. But this is very doubtful.* 



* Speaking of the oblique muscles, Dr. Sharpey observes, ' on the whole, 
it appears most probable that these muscles produce the revolving move- 
ments which have been described, and little more, and that they may, with 
Dr. Jacob, be regarded as ' rotatory muscles,' their office being, when act- 
ing together, to revolve the eye ' round a longitudinal axis, directed from 
the open [the anterior] part of the orbit to its bottom.' But, supposing 
them to act singly, the axis would, in all probability, be slightly altered 
during the rotation.' — (Quain, p. 265). There is nothing that I can see to 
object to this view, except the difficulty of saying what purpose is to be 

Q 



226 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

3. Such being the mechanism of the eye, I must now 
touch briefly upon its mode of acting as the organ of sight. 
The optical part of the process is well enough understood. 
When the eye is directed to any object, an image of that 
object is depicted on the back of the eye, by means of 
the rays of light entering the pupil, and duly refracted by 
the different humours. The image, which is inverted, pro- 
duces an impression somehow upon the retina, with the 
assistance of the choroid coat, and this impression passes in- 
wards to the nervous centres, whence the optic nerve takes 
its rise. In order to pei^fect vision the following conditions 
are necessary: — 

(1.) A sufficiency of light or illumination in the object 
viewed. This is an obvious necessity. We judge of the 
quantity of light present by the power we have of seeing 
objects distinctly. Some animals can see with much less 
light than others, and to such the noonday sun must be painful. 

(2.) The formation of the image exactly on the retina, 
and not before or behind. The focus of the image must 
coincide with the retina. If this is not the case the image 
is indistinct; the rays of light either do not converge, or have 
begun to disperse at the back of the eye. The perfect con- 
vergence of the image by the lenses of the eye depends on 
the distance of the object, and also in some degree on the self- 
adjustment of the eye. ■ As this power of adaptation of the 
eye itself for vision, at different distances, has its limits, there 
is in every individual a distance at which he sees most dis- 
tinctly, and at which the focus of the image, formed by the 
refracting media of the eye, corresponds most accurately with 
the situation of the retina. This distance may be stated at 
from five to ten inches, in the majority of individuals. Objects 
which are too near the eye throw very indistinct images upon 
the retina ; a slender body, such as a pin, held close to the eye, 
cannot be seen at all, or produces only an undefined im- 



sevved by the rotation of the eyeball. I do not know of any occasion when 
such a rotatory motion is necessary to vision. The eye can take in a picture 
equally well in all positions, and there appears to be no need for whirling it 
a little way round its axis to improve the view. 



CONDITIONS OF PERFECT VISION. 227 

pression on the retina. Few persons, on the other hand, 
are able to read print at a much greater distance than twenty 
inches/ 

(3.) 'The third condition is the minute size of the ultimate 
divisions of the retina capable of independent sensation. An 
illustration of this is afforded by bodies of which the surfaces 
are marked with very fine alternate white and black lines. 
Engravings viewed at such a distance, that the images of the 
black and white lines fall together upon portions of the retina 
of a certain decree of minuteness, cannot be distinguished as 
separate lines, and produce merely the mixed impression of 
grey; the same remark applies to very fine lines of different 
colours, regularly alternating with each other, — for instance, 
blue and yellow lines; in this case the impression of green 
will be produced. There must therefore be ultimate portions 
of the retina, in which all simultaneous impressions are per- 
ceived as one only, and are not distinguished as occupying 
distinct places in the field of vision, even when they really 
are distinct in the image formed by the refracting media. 
The idea immediately suggests itself, that these ultimate 
sentient portions of the retina may be the papillae, or rod- 
shaped bodies of its internal lamina; and it would appear 
probable, that different luminous rays impinging simulta- 
neously on different points of the surface of such minute 
portion or papilla of the retina will not be perceived as 
distinct rays, but that each papilla will receive one mixed im- 
pression only, and will propagate such an impression to the 
optic nerve. On this supposition, the image perceived in the 
eye must be composite, like a piece of mosaic-work, in which 
each elementary portion is itself homogeneous.' In accord- 
dance with this view, some anatomists have found a cor- 
respondence between the size 01 the ultimate anatomical 
elements of the retina and the smallest portions found by 
experiment to be capable of separate sensation. ' According 
to other data, however, no such agreement is found to pre- 
vail; and Volkmann's observations render it probable that 
the discriminating power of the retina is much greater than 
it could be, were the nervous fibres its ultimate elements.' 

Q 2 



228 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

Estimating from the observed discrimination of an eye of 
ordinary power, he calculates that the retina is distinctly 
sensible to about the forty-thousandth part of an incli, 
whereas the ultimate fibres of the retina are reckoned at 
about the eight-thousandth of an inch; the power of discri- 
mination being thus five times greater than the subdivision 
of the nerve fibres.* 

This is one of the many difficulties that remain unsolved 
on the subject of vision. The only fact that I know of, as 
throwing light upon it, is that formerly stated regarding 
touch. — namely, that the discriminating power of the skin is 
increased by moving the object over the part. Possibly the 
movement of the eye over the field of view, may in the same 
way lead to the discrimination of distances smaller than the 
interval between two papilla? or fibres. I cannot venture to 
assert that the movement of the hand increases the discrimi- 
nation so much as fivefold ; but it does not follow that the 
eye with its more delicate muscular sensibility may not ap- 
proach the requisite amount.f 

The great superiority of the eye, as a medium for per- 
ceiving the outer world, lies in this power of independent 
sensibility to minute points. I have already adverted to the 
distinction between the lower and higher senses in this par- 
ticular. The nerve of vision must needs consist of a number 
of independent fibres maintaining their distinctness all the 
way to the brain, and capable of causing distinct waves of 
diffusion throughout the entire cerebral mass; every one of 
these many thousand impressions making a separate mental 
experience, and originating a distinct volition. We shall 
probably meet with no fact attesting more conspicuously the 
complexity, and yet the separateness of action, of the cere- 
bral system. We can easily satisfy ourselves of the reason 
why the cerebral hemispheres should be necessary to vision, 
considering what is thus implied in every instance of seeing 
whatsoever. 



* Muller's Physiology, by Baly, t 134-6. 

f Sir William -Hamilton remarks upon this difficulty, and hints at an 
explanation, in Dissertations on Meid, p. 862. 



ADAPTATION OF THE EYE TO DISTANCE. 229 

It must, however, be observed that perfect discrimination 
resides onty in a limited spot of the eye, or in that part where 
an object lies when we concentrate our attention upon it. 
Thus, although I see a wide prospect, my power of minute 
discrimination is confined to the place where I am said to be 
looking, that is, on the line of the axis of the eye. In the 
borders of the field of view everything is dim and vague. 

4. 0)i the Adaptation of the Eye to Vision at different 
Distances. — If I see an object distinctly six inches distant 
from the eye, all objects at a greater distance are indistinct. 
The image of the near object falls correctly on the retina, the 
images of remote objects are formed in front of the retina. 
By a voluntary effort I can adapt the eye to see a far off 
object with tolerable clearness, but it then happens that any 
near body becomes confused. The question arises what is the 
change produced upon the eyeball in the course of this adap- 
tation from near to far, and from far to near, and what 
apparatus effects the change. Many answers have been given 
to this question, but no one is yet completely established. 
The following remarks are all that are admissible in this 
place. 

(1.) The change, whatever it be, seems not to depend upon 
the external muscles of the eye. It has been conceived that 
the recti and oblique muscles might by being strongly exerted 
alter the shape of the globe, and with that its focal distance, 
but such idea does not now obtain credence. On the other 
hand, the convergence of the two eyes is exclusively effected 
by these muscles, and along with this convergence the internal 
adjustment of each eye is found to take place, implying some 
fixed association between the movements of convergence or 
divergence and the alteration of the ball. 

(2.) The ciliary muscle already alluded to, from its position 
and attachments, would draw the crystalline lens nearer to 
the cornea, and thus alter, it is believed, the focal distance of 
the lens. In the effort to view near objects this muscle would 
be contracted ; in the case of more remote objects it would be 
relaxed, and the eye would have to recover its shape by means 
of the elasticity of the parts. ' It is interesting to notice that 



230 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

this adjusting faculty of the eye is greatly impaired or alto- 
gether lost by extraction of the lens, or by paralysing the 
ciliary and iridial muscles by belladonna/ 

(3.) The movements of the iris itself have some connexion 
with the distance of the objects. The pupil is found to con- 
tract duriDg near vision, and to expand in looking at remote 
objects. This is believed to be a coincidence with the con- 
verging and diverging action of the two eyes ; but there is no 
sufficient proof that the eye is adjusted by this circumstance- 
It is convenient in remote vision to have the pupil expanded 
for the sake of light, and in near vision to contract it, in order 
to exclude a portion of the extreme rays, and thereby obtain 
a more distinct image. 

(4.) The eyeball is subject to alteration chiefly for near 
distances. Between the smallest visible distance, say four 
inches, and three feet, nearly the whole range of the adjust- 
ment is gone through. When we compare distant objects of 
varying remoteness, as, for example, thirty feet with one 
hundred, or a thousand, very little change is effected on the 
form of the eyeball, the adjustment then depending on the 
greater or less convergence of the two eyes. This leads us to 
the subject of double vision. 

5. Of single Vision with two eyes. Binocular Vision. — 
Among the questions long discussed in connexion with sight, 
was included the inquiry, why with two eyes do we see objects 
single ? Answers more or less satisfactory were attempted to 
be given ; but since the year 1838, an entirely new turn has 
been given to the discussion. In that year, Professor Wheat- 
stone gave to the Royal Society his paper on Binocular Vision, 
wherein he described his ' stereoscope/ or instrument for imi- 
tating and illustrating the action of the two eyes in producing 
single vision. The following quotation is from the opening- 
paragraph : — 

' When an object is viewed at so great a distance that the 
optic axes of both eyes are sensibly parallel when directed 
towards it, the perspective projections of each, seen by each 
eye separately, are similar, and the appearance of the two 
eyes is precisely the same as when the object is seen by one 



BINOCULAR VISION". 



231 



eye only. There is in such case no difference between the 
visual appearance of an object in relief, and its perspective 
projection on a plane surface ; and hence pictorial representa- 
tions of distant objects, when those circumstances which would 
prevent or disturb the illusion are carefully excluded, may be 
rendered such perfect resemblances of the objects they are 
intended to represent as to be mistaken for them ; the Diorama 
is an instance of this. But this similarity no longer exists 
when the object is placed so near the eyes that to view it the 
optic axes* must converge, and these perspectives are more 
dissimilar as the convergence of the optic axes becomes greater. 
This fact may be easily verified by placing any figure of three 
dimensions — an outline cube, for instance, — at a moderate 
distance before the eyes, and while the head is kept perfectly 
steady, viewing it with each eye successively while the other 
is closed. The figure represents the two perspective projec- 



J<IG. 





a 


/ 


i 






/ 


1 



<7 

k 



tions of a cube ; a is seen by the right eye, and d is the view 
presented to the left eye, the figure being supposed to be 
placed about seven inches immediately before the spectator/ 

" ' It will now be obvious why it is impossible for the artist 
to give a faithful rejjresentation of any near solid object, that 
is to produce a painting which shall not be distinguished in 
the mind from the object itself. When the painting and the 
object are seen with both eyes, in the case of the painting two 



* The optic axis of the eye is the Hue of visible direction for distinct 
vision, or a line proceeding from the central point of the retina, and passing 
through the centres of the lenses of the eye. 



232 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

similar pictures are projected on the retinae, in the case of 
the solid object the pictures are dissimilar ; there is there- 
fore an essential difference between the impressions on the 
organs of sensation in the two cases, and consequently between 
the perceptions formed in the mind ; the painting, therefore? 
cannot be confounded with the solid object/ 

Mr. Wbeatstone then goes on to describe his stereoscope, 
or apparatus for imitating the effect of double vision. This 
instrument is now so common that I need not insert a descrip- 
tion here. Two forms of it are in use, but the principle 
of both is the same ; that is, to present two different pictures 
of an object, such as the cubes above figured, one to each eye 
exclusively, and «o as that they may appear only one picture- 
By so doing, a vivid appearance of solid effect starts forth to 
the view. While the two pictures are seen apart from each 
other they are looked upon simply as pictures, but when they 
are made as it were to cover one another in the field of view, 
there is no longer a picture but a solid reality. The effect 
must be experienced in order to be appreciated. It is impos- 
sible to resist the conclusion that our perception of solidity or 
of three dimensions, is most powerfully aided by the concentra- 
tion of the two eyes upon the same object, and by the view 
thus derived through the two dissimilar pictures. 

The drawing of figures to suit the stereoscope was a trou- 
blesome and tedious operation. But no sooner was Daguerre's 
discovery announced than Professor Wbeatstone laid hold of 
it to furnish him with his binocular views ; and since then the 
use of the stereoscope has been vastly extended. It is only 
necessary to daguerreotype two views of the same object cor- 
responding to the views of the two eyes, that is, to turn it 
slightly round for the second view ; the two pictures placed in 
the stereoscope give the perfect appearance of relief. 

When the two different pictures seem to cover one another 
in the field of view, the singleness of vision takes place along 
with the effect of solidity above mentioned. This fact is sup- 
posed to imply a certain correspondence of the two eyes, or 
the existence of corresponding points or places in each, such 
that when binocular pictures fall on any pair, one single effect 



SENSATION OF LIGHT. 233 

arises in the brain. Doubtless some general correspondence 
must exist, but this cannot be maintained as an invariable 
fact. 

There are still difficulties in the way of the full explana- 
tion of double vision, and of the perception of solidity arising 
from it. What remains to be said upon it in the present 
chapter will fall properly under the last head of the subject, 
the Sensations of sight. 

6. Before quitting the consideration of the Eye, I should 
mention that the seeing of objects erect by means of an in- 
verted image on the retina has been conceived as a phe- 
nomenon demanding explanation. But to make this a question 
at all is to misapprehend entirely the process of visual per- 
ception. An object seems to us to be up or down according 
as we raise or lower the pupil of the eye in order to see it ; 
the very notion of up and down is derived from our feelings 
of movement, and not at all from the optical image formed on 
the back of the eye. Wherever this image was formed, and 
however it lay, we should consider that to be the top of the 
object which we had to raise our eyes or our body to reach. 

7. And now as to the Sensations, or the proper mental 
elements of Sight. The feelings arising from Sight alone 
make only one class of these sensations ; the combination of 
the optical and muscular states gives birth to the most various 
and interesting department of feelings connected with vision. 

8. I shall commence with the sensation of mere light, and 
shall take the diffused solar radiance as the leading example. 
This is one of the most powerful of the simple influences that 
affect the human sense. Light is eminently a source of 
pleasure, which rises in degree, within certain limits, in pro- 
portion to the abundance of the luminous emanation. In 
clear strong sunshine, filling the entire breadth of the eye and 
freshly encountered, there is a massive powerful influence of 
pleasurable elation, acutely felt. The effect is sufficiently 
intense, massive, and keen to make a predominating or 
engrossing emotion, like alimentation, warmth, or the other 
powerful forms of organic and muscular feeling formerly de- 
scribed. The quality that most distinguishes it from these 



234; SENSE OF SIGHT. 

other feelings is the endurableness of it. The physical influ- 
ence of light, although able to excite a first class sensation in 
point of power, is yet so gentle that we can endure it far 
longer than we can any other sensuous influence of similar 
efficacy. This is one of the peculiarities of pleasure or emo- 
tion that we understand by the term 'refinement;' the 
pleasures of the eye in general are said to be the most refined 
of the enjoyments of sense ; those of the ear rank second in 
this respect. The influence of the solar ray is evidently 
favourable to the animal functions — the respiration or diges- 
tion, &c, probably through both physical and mental causes ; 
at any rate the feeling engendered is freshening and cheering, 
and can often suffice to support the frame of mind against 
the depressing organic influences, thus manifesting by a 
neutralising efficacy the full equality above asserted between 
it and them. 

The emotion now described is in a high degree tranquil 
and serene, like the best forms of pleasure of the other senses. 
There is a kindred character between it and agreeable warmth, 
independent I believe of the usual association of light and 
heat. The painter speaks of a warm colour, as if there were 
certain modes of light that impart to the sensitive framework 
the peculiar tremor of genial warmth. The feeling of light is 
as much akin to the sweet in taste and smell, the soft in 
touch, and the sweet in sound, as the great differences of 
organ will permit. 

There is a strong sympathy of nature between this feeling 
and the respective emotions of love and beauty. Probably 
this resemblance is merely greater in degree than what obtains 
between the proper pleasures of the other senses and these 
emotions. 

The distinction of the sensations of sight as respects the 
intellect is well marked, as I shall have occasion to notice 
again. These are more persistent and recoverable than any 
others as a general rule, and hence we are able to live them 
over aorain in the life of ideas. This is a second circumstance 
entering into our notion of refinement. The intellectual 
character of the feelings of vision, besides alimenting our 



VARIETIES OF LIGHT. 235 

intellect proper, enhances their value as mere emotion or 
pleasure. The impress of vivid illumination remains in the 
mind when the original is gone, and becomes an object of 
recollection, anticipation, and longing, more than any other 
pleasure of sense, excepting always the strong appetites 
at their periods of pressing urgency. To the blind Milton, the 
emotions of light could become powerfully present, and 
suggest a lofty and apposite train of descriptive imagery. 

It will be necessary next to advert to the different forms 
and varieties of the sensation of light. I have supposed in 
the above description, the case of abundant but not excessive 
or painful sunshine; it was necessary also, in order to state 
the full force of the feelino-, to imagine the first or fresh out- 
burst of light after comparative darkness. Notwithstanding 
the endurability of the eye, the sunlight may be too strong, 
and too long continued : there arises, then, a painful form ot 
fatigue in the eye and in the head. But as the light that 
reaches us is nearly all reflected light from the surfaces about 
us, the sky, the landscape, the walls of buildings, &c, there 
are many varieties of it, and many different effects on the 
internal sensibility. There is this peculiarity, however, in a 
time of sunshine, that a large portion of the sun's unaltered 
rays reach the eye by reflection, so that we have predomi- 
nating the sensation proper to pure sun-light. Next in 
character to the original ray and its mirrored reflection, is 
the radiance of strong white surfaces, as the clouds, the sea- 
foam, white walls, chalk cliffs, white . dresses, &c. This gives 
us very much of the sensation of light, but in a less intense 
form; indeed the richness of these surfaces consists in reflect- 
ing abundantly the solar ray when abundantly receiving it. 

The course of the day and of the year gives us all degrees 
of illumination, from outer darkness to the radiance of mid- 
summer noon. Of darkness, or the total absence of light, as 
a habitual thing, I could only speak by contrasts, or oppo- 
sites to the language above used. As the repose from light 
it is not only endurable but welcome; with shade and shadow 
we have no necessarily unpleasant associations. The mixing 
up of the proper amount of dark with the daily sun-shower 



236 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

is one of our arts for adjusting and regulating our pleasures. 
The grateful emotion of light is perfect only when we stop 
short, having attained the exact amount that the eye can 
bear; and for this adjustment the command of darkness is 
necessary. In cold, moist climates, such as ours, there is 
probably too little sun-light; a greater quantity would un- 
doubtedly increase the pleasures of life in these islands. In 
what places the balance of light and shade is best struck, I 
cannot pretend to say. Too much sun-light, even if not hurt- 
ful, is probably unfavourable to active exertion. 

9. Before taking up the sensations of colour, it is worth 
while to remark on the artificial lights; their ray being dif- 
ferent in character from the solar. A fire, or a lamp, is so much 
weaker than the sun's face, that we can gaze upon them 
directly for hours together. We have, then, what I might 
term a pungent luminous sensation, more intense, concen- 
trated, and coarse, than the diffused radiance of day-light. 
When the eyes are feeble, this is an unsafe luxury. There is 
an apparently involuntary attraction of the eye towards the 
flame of a candle; the real fact is, that we voluntarily turn to 
it to drink in a strong sensation. The flickering blaze of the 
hearth, the furnace glare, the bonfire illumination, are all 
highly exciting as the cause of strong luminous sensations. I 
call these effects coarse and pungent, because of the inferiority 
of the terrestrial lights to the solar ray, in delicacy and in 
balanced mixture, as well as of the obvious difference of 
sensation. Nevertheless, our experience of a brilliantly lighted 
room, exemplifies strikingly the pleasurable and exciting 
influence of a copious illumination. 

10. The effect of colour is distinct from the effects of light 
and shade, or of pure whiteness and the mixtures of this 
with black. I am disposed to use the same term, 'pun- 
gency,' to express this difference. The optic nerve would 
seem to be more powerfully irritated or inflamed, by colour 
than by whiteness, but also it may be more readily fatigued. 
Of all colours, red is the most pungent and exciting. In the 
midst of other tints this intoxicates the eye, and satiates the 
ajjpetite for luminous effect. Red is the colour of state, 



COLOUR. — LUSTRE. 237 

glitter, and display — avoided by a taste for sobriety and 
retirement. This colour does not grea'tly abound in nature, 
and is therefore sought out by art. The discovery of the 
scarlet and purple dyes was the introduction of a new plea- 
sure. Green is much less pungent than red, but is never- 
theless an effective and stimulating colour. Yellow is probably 
next to red in intensity of stimulus, after which would come 
blue. There is a general belief that of these four prominent 
colours, green is the one that can be longest endured without 
fatigue. The mild blue of the sky may be as little fatiguing, 
but is certainly less exciting than the first bloom of spring 
vegetation. The effect of red upon the bull and other animals 
is probably a proof of its fiery and exciting character. The 
eye fatigued either with white sunshine, or with the pungent 
colours, finds repose in green; hence the character of fresh- 
ness belonging to this colour. 

ii. It has been believed, since the time of Sir Isaac 
Newton, that white light is not a simple but a complex 
effect; for by mixing colours together, in certain proportions, 
whiteness will be produced. Red, yellow, and blue are sup- 
posed to be the primitive or elementary colours; out of these 
any other colour can be formed, and by combining them 
in certain proportions, colour can be made to disappear in 
favour of white light. This fact is the physical foundation of 
harmony of colouring. When different tints occur together, 
as in a picture, the total effect is most pleasing when they are 
in the proportions requisite for producing whiteness. Two 
colours harmonize, if one is a primitive colour, and the other 
a certain mixture of the two remaining colours : thus red har- 
monizes with green (formed out of yellow and blue) ; blue 
harmonizes with orange or gold (a mixture of red and yellow); 
yellow harmonizes with violet (red and blue). The eye, 
excited by one of these colours, desiderates, and feels refreshed 
by the other. When the white ray is thus resolved into two 
colours, they are termed complementary colours; such are 
red and green, blue and orange, yellow and violet. These 
complementary colours are to one another like light and shade, 
they enable the eye to support a greater amount of coloured 



238 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

effect. And to eyes sensitive to the harmony and balance of 
colour, they are more exciting and pleasing than the mere 
combination of sun and shadow. The sensation resulting 
from well harmonized colour is more sweet and exquisite 
than the feeling of a single unbalanced effect, as red, blue, or 
orange; it is an example of the emotion that we term 'the 
beautiful/ Combinations that leave out one of the primary 
elements, are called discordant, as } 7 ellow with red, yellow 
with blue, or blue with red ; we have then the effect of a single 
unbalanced colour. Whiteness being the balanced sensibility 
of the retina — the mutual destruction by the colours of one 
another's pungency — the elements of white held apart give us 
the maximum of pleasure with the minimum of fatigue, 
which result it is the constant endeavour of art and refine- 
ment to bring about. 

1 2. There remains to be noticed the sensation of lustre, 
which is somewhat distinct from any of the foregoing. Lustre 
is caused by a colour seen through a transparent covering. 
One of the best examples is that furnished by the pebbles at 
the bottom of a clear pellucid stream. The sensation pro- 
duced by this combination of colour and transparency is very 
remarkable, a fresh, rich, luxurious feeling, suggesting coolness 
in the midst of oppressive heat, and inviting the lounger to 
plunge bodily into the element. It may be said that the 
associations of coolness make the principal charm of this 
sensation, which might be granted, were it not that a similar 
effect is produced in many other circumstances that exclude 
the thought of water. Take the case of polished marble and 
coloured gems. In these we find developed a transparent 
film, through which is seen a rich white, green, red, &c, and 
the combination of the rays reflected from the transparent 
surface with those passing through it from the coloured 
surface, is the lustre, brilliancy, glitter, in a word the beauty 
of the object. I can give no explanation of this effect, but 
we are bound to remark it among the sensations of light and 
colour. More stimulating, piquant, and exquisite than mere 
white, red, or green, it is at the same time not fiery and 
exhausting, and is therefore an admirable effect for being 



OPTICAL AND MUSCULAR FEELINGS COMBINED. 239 

worked up and reproduced in art as well as admired in nature. 
The finer woods yield it by polish and varnish ; a painter's 
colours are often dull and dead till a transparent film has 
been superadded. It sometimes redeems the privation of 
light and colour, as in the jet, or lustrous, black. The green 
leaf is often adorned by it, through the addition of moisture, if 
not by an inherent property of the tissue. I am not sure if 
much of the refreshing influence of greenness in vegetation is 
not due to lustrous greenness. Animal tissues are the most 
favourable to this effect. Not only such substances as ivory, 
bone, and mother of pearl, but silk and wool owe their 
distinguishing richness and glitter to this cause. It is the 
chief beauty of the human hair and skin ; but the eye is per- 
haps the finest example that nature affords. In the one case 
we have an imperfectly transparent film causing a gloss ; in 
the other we have a great depth of perfectly pellucid sub- 
stance. Through the pupil is seen the jet blackness of the 
choroid, and the colours of the iris are liquified by the trans- 
parency of the aqueous humour. 

13. We have next to deal with the complex sensations 
of sight, those resulting from the combination of optical effect 
with the feelings of movement arising out of the muscles of 
the eyeball. As in the case of Touch, this combination is 
necessary as a basis of those perceptions of the external world 
that are associated with sight — Externality, Motion, Form, 
Distance, Expanse, Solidity, and relative Position. It is 
admitted that mere light and colour will not suffice to found 
these perceptions upon, and it is my object here, as in the 
discussions on Muscularity and Touch, to refer them to the 
moving apparatus of the eye and body generally. 

14. I shall commence with motion. One of the earliest 
acquired of our voluntary actions is the power of following a 
moving object by the sight. Supposing the eye arrested by a 
strong light, as a candle flame, the shifting of the candle would 
draw the eyes after it, partly through their own movements 
and partly by the rotation of the head. The consequence is 
a complex sensation of light and movement, just as the 
sensation of a weight depressing the hand is a sensation of 



240 SENSE OB 1 SIGHT. 

touch and movement. The movement of the eye now sup- 
posed generates an additional pleasure, by superadding the ex- 
citement of muscular sensibility to mere optical sensation. It 
does more ; for there is left behind an impression not of light 
alone, but of light and movement, and if the object comes to 
be recalled in idea, this is not a mere idea of luminosity 
restored to the optic nerve, but a joint restoration upon this 
nerve and the nerves and muscles of the eyeball and head. 
If the light moves to the right, the right muscles are engaged 
in following in it ; if to the left, the left muscles, and so on ; 
and thus we have several distinct combinations of light and 
muscular impression marking distinctness of direction, and 
never confounded with one another. The feeling or sensation 
caused by movement involves also definite direction according 
to the muscles engaged, and this compound feeling is the 
mental or subjective element corresponding to the external 
fact of a moving object as seen by the eye. 

Motion may be not only in any one continuous direction, 
bat may change its direction, and take a course crooked or 
curved. This brings into play new muscles and combinations, 
and leaves behind a different trace of muscular action. The 
right muscles of the eye may have to act along with the 
superior muscles, and at a shifting rate. This will give an 
oblique and slanting direction ; which we will ever afterwards 
identify when the same muscles are similarly brought into 
operation. We have thus a perfect discrimination of varying 
directions through the distinct muscles that they excite. 

Our muscular sensibility also discriminates rate or velocity 
of movement. A quick movement excites a different feeling 
from one that is slow ; and we thereby acquire graduated 
sensations, corresponding to degrees of speed, up to a certain 
limit of nicety. 

While the retina of the eye thus receives one and the same 
optical impression (in the supposed case of the candle flame), 
this may by movement be imbedded in a great many different 
muscular impressions, and may constitute a great variety of 
pictorial effect. By changing the muscles and by varying their 
rate of action, we may so change the resulting impressions that 



SPECTACLE OF MOVING OBJECTS. 241 

any one motion shall be recognised by us as distinct from every 
other, while each may be identified on a recurrence. I do not 
say that we have yet the perception or notion of a thing 
external to ourselves, moving through space at a certain 
speed, because this perception implies a concurrence of senses ; 
such a concurrence of these combined eye-sensations with 
other senses and movements being, as I believe, the only 
thing needed to make up the perception as we find it. 

Nearly all the pleasures of muscular movement, described 
in the previous chapter, may be experienced in the spectacle 
of moving objects. The massive, languid feeling of slow 
movement, the excitement of a rapid pace, the still higher 
pleasure of a waxing or waning speed, can all be realized 
through the muscles of the eye and the head. The slow pro- 
cession, the gallop of a race-borse, the flight of a cannon-ball, 
exhibit different varieties of the excitement of motion. In the 
motion of a projectile, where a rapid horizontal sweep is 
accompanied with a gentle rise and fall, we have one set of 
muscles in quick tension and another set in slow tension, 
making a mixed and more agreeable effect. Motions in curves 
are the best means of giving this pleasing combination, and 
also the still more pi easing effect of increasing and dying motion. 
When a projectile flies across the field of view the horizontal 
motion is uniform, but the pace upwards diminishes, and at 
last dies away at the highest point ; the body then recom- 
mences a downward course, slow at first, but accelerating until 
it reach the ground. Whatever gratification there may be in 
the increase and diminution of movement is obtained through 
the muscles concerned in raising and lowering the eyes, while 
the muscles that give a horizontal movement would not be 
similarly gratified unless by an effect of perspective in an 
oblique view. 

The pleasures of moving objects and stirring spectacle 
count for much in the excitement of human life. They are 
really pleasures of action ; but inasmuch as only a very limited 
portion of muscle is excited by them, they do not constitute 
bodily exercise, and are therefore to all practical intents passive 
pleasures, like music or sunshine. Thus dramatic spectacle, 

K 



242 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

the ballet, the circus, the horse race, the view of parties 
engaged in sports — although engaging the activity of the eye, 
do not belong properly to active enjoyments. 

15. Among the permanent imagery of the intellect, 
recalled, combined, and dwelt upon in many ways, we are to 
include visible movements. The flight of a bird is a charac- 
teristic that distinguishes one species from another, and the 
impression left by it is part of our knowledge or recollection 
of each individual kind. The gallop of a horse is a series of 
moving pictures that leave a trace behind them, and are 
revived as such. The motions that constitute the carriage and 
expression of an animal or a man, demand particular move- 
ments of the eye in order to take them in, and store them up 
among our permanent notions. All the gestures, modes of 
action, and changes of feature that emotion inspires are visible 
to the eye as an assemblage of movements, and we recognise 
such movements as marking agreement or difference among 
individuals and between different passions. Many of the 
aspects of the external world impress themselves upon the 
moving apparatus of the eye. The waves of the sea, the 
drifting of clouds, the fall of rain, the waving of the trees under 
the wind, the rushing of water, the darting of meteors, the 
rising and setting of the sun, are all mixed impressions of 
spectacle and movement. In like manner, in the various 
processes of the arts, there are characteristic movements to 
constitute our notions and means of discrimination of those 
processes. The evolutions of armies have to be remembered 
as movements, and therefore need to be embodied among the 
muscular recollections of the system. 

1 6. We ought next to consider the sensations of Form, or 
of the outlines of objects at rest. For this purpose it is 
advisable to allude first to the sensations of distance from the 
eye, these being in fact included in the imagery of movement 
just discussed. We have already seen that there is a double 
adaptation of the eye to distance, namely, a change in the 
ball, for near distances, and an alteration in the direction of 
the two eyes, or in the parallelism of the axes, for all distances 
near and far. These adaptations are undoubtedly muscular ; 



SENSATION OF DISTANCE. 243 

that is, they consist in the greater or less contraction of parti- 
cular muscles. Now, the contraction of muscles in any part 
whatever yields a distinct feeling ; we are conscious not only 
of the fact of tension, but of different degrees of tension. 
Hence every change in the interior of the ball by muscular 
influence, and in the convergence of the axes, causes a change 
of feeling ; we have a discriminative consciousness of all the 
different stages of adaptation. The consciousness of sight at 
six inches is never confounded with the consciousness of a foot, 
and this last is widely different from the feeling of a hundred 
feet. Thus it is that our minds are differently affected by 
different distances, so that we cannot confound an object at 
five feet with an object at fifty feet. The discrimination is of 
the same nature, although not so nice, as in drawing the hand 
across a table from an object thirty inches off to another object 
close at our side. The difference of muscular tension is un- 
mistakeable. 

In this way, therefore, the eye gives us a means of dis- 
tinguishing objects, according as they are far or near, through 
the feelings consequent on the muscular adaptation for 
securing distinctness of vision. An object moving away from 
the eye in a straight line would give us a changing sensation 
no less than an object moving across the field of view. An 
object moving obliquely, that is receding or approaching, 
while going across the view, would give a complex feeling 
embodied in the movements of the eye and head, and in the 
movements of adaptation. 

There is a distinct emotional sensibility in the feeling of 
distance, more especially of remote distance. A far object 
exalts the muscular feeling of the eye, and is a source of lively 
pleasure : — the pleasure of muscular tension in muscles pecu- 
liarly sensitive. The principal effort for a distant view is con- 
centrated in the two adductor muscles of the two eyes, which 
have distinct nerves supplied to them. By these, the axes of 
the eye are drawn from a converging to a parallel position. 
This exercise of the adductor muscles is part of the pleasure 
derived from the outside prospect after in-door confinement. 

17. We may pass now to the consideration of form, shape, 

R 2 



244 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

or outline. The difference between the sensation of form in a 
still object, as a rainbow, and a moving object, as a flying bird, 
is not so great as appears at first glance. In both there occurs 
the feeling of movement. In taking a picture of the rainbow, 
we must pass the view along the whole curvature exactly as if 
it were a moving thing describing the extended arc of the 
heavens. The image that is left is therefore still an impres- 
sion of movement combined with the optical impression. The 
main difference lies in this, that in the case of a bird we have 
the entire image comprehended in the centre of the retina, 
where the stress of observation lies ; in the case of the rain- 
bow, we have an image continued over the whole breadth of 
the retina, extending from the central point of observation 
into the vague regions of the circumference. This last makes 
up our feeling of a continuous image. We have an impression 
of all the objects that can enter the pupil at one time, which 
would include a range of about a third of a circle right and 
left, up and down ; and although distinct observation can 
occur only at a narrow part in the centre of the view, yet 
some kind of impression is made by the whole, sufficient to 
give us a sense of continuity. But it is only by moving the 
eye hither and thither that any distinct view can be obtained, 
and the impression that the view leaves behind is therefore an 
impression of lights, shades, and colours, combined with move- 
ments. In the observation of still life, there is not the same 
stimulus to move the eye over the outlines of objects as in the 
case of moving bodies, hence our attention to still forms is 
more languid. When the eye is once fixed on an object we 
are reluctant to lose it, and if the object moves, we follow its 
course ; but we have not the same alacrity in moving the eye 
along 1 a continuous line or circle. Nevertheless there is 
a sufficient amount of spontaneous activity in the movements 
of the eye to prompt this kind of observation, though in a less 
degree than the other ; and by this means we acquire our dis- 
tinctive impressions of form, figure, or shape. By a circular 
sweep we are impressed with a ring ; by a straight sweep we 
take in a line ; by a sudden change of direction we imbibe an 
angle. By movements confined to the head and eyes we grasp 



FORM, VISUAL EXPANSE, SOLIDITY. 245 

objects lying directly across the view, or with all parts equally 
distant from the eye ; by these movements, combined with 
altered adaptation to distance, we have figures of objects that 
retreat from the view, as in looking dowm a street. 

By means of the movements of the eye, we acquire impres- 
sions of the visual expanse or apparent magnitude. This 
visual expanse of bodies is determined by the range or sweep 
of the eye in passing over their whole extent, or by the frac- 
tion of the field of view that they take in. We see a rainbow 
spanning one-third of the heavens ; we see a cloud encircling 
the sky ; we appreciate the dimensions of a picture on the 
wall as compared with other pictures beside it. The different 
degrees of movement and tension of the muscles that make 
the sweep are distinctly felt, and we set down one sweep as 
more or less than another. We also acquire by repetition 
standards of comparison for expanses in general, as we acquire 
standards of weight in the sensibility of the arms. 

1 8. The combination of our feeling of varying distances 
from the eye, resulting from the movements of adaptation, 
with the feeling of visual expanse, gives, as we have already 
seen, the feeling of solidity, or of three dimensions in one 
continuous object. It has been remarked above, that in seeing 
a line which crosses the field of view, the impression left con- 
sists of a distinct portion of the line corresponding to the 
centre of the retina continued into indistinctness in the cir- 
cumference of the retina. So in looking at a retreating line, 
we have to describe a movement of adaptation as we pass 
along, and the effect at any one instant would be a distinct 
view of one portion, while the other portions are indistinct 
and confused. Thus in a vista of houses, the adaptation that 
suits the nearest makes the others confused, although still 
within the field of view, or pictured on the retina ; if the 
middle house is distinct, the two ends of the line will be 
confused or indistinct. This is the strict visual impression or 
effect of varying distance, and the combination of this with 
sweep or expanse realizes the impression of three dimensions, 
and of solidity. When I look at a cubical block, I have to 
make a series of movements, right and left, up and down, to 



246 SENSE OF SIGHT. 

take in the figure and expanse, and as my eye gets on the 
retreating side I must also adapt for distance, and there results 
from all this the visual impression of solidity.* 

19. The sensation of position or relative situation contains 
nothing peculiar. The place of an object is ascertained by the 
distance and direction of it as regards other objects. Thus the 
place of the sun is determined by the apparent height above 
the horizon, or the upward sweep of the eye, and by the 
distance from a cardinal point as determined by a horizontal 
sweep. 

20. I have adverted to the large class of impressions that 
we receive from moving objects, and to the emotions that they 
produce, and the permanent imagery that they contribute to 
the intelligence. A parallel illustration might be afforded in 
the class of forms, or of objects conceived as having extent 
and outline, whether at rest or in motion. Every visible 
thing has dimensions and shape as well as some shade of light 
or colour, and by these qualities each individual body is dis- 
criminated, and impressed upon the optical and mechanical 
susceptibility of the eye. Some objects have a wide expanse, 
others are limited ; some are straight, others curved ; some 
have a simple outline, as a square or a triangle, others are very 
complex, and demand many movements to follow them out ; as 
a human figure, a building, or a mass of decorative tracery. 
The variety of sensation thus arising is very great. 

As regards the emotional effect of the visual sensations of 
objects, I have already remarked on the influence of light and 
colour, and also on the effect of the single element of distance. 
When this element is combined with great visual expanse, we 
have then the sensation of largeness, and of a wide prospect. 



* We shall have to remark on this subject again, when considering the 
acquired perceptions of the eye. In fact, the above statement, as to the 
indistinctness of the parts of the field of view not falling in the centre of the 
eye, and not corresponding to the adjustment for distance at the moment, 
will scarcely correspond to our ordinary experience. The reason of this is, 
that the mind supplies from the past what the eye does not distinctly see at 
the time, so that the picture actually realized is not the bare optical impres- 
sion of the moment, but a much fuller picture which that impression suffices 
to suggest. 



INTELLECTUAL LMAGEKY. 247 

This feeling is very powerful, and not unlike the feeling of the 
voluminous in sound ; it is a massive and keen emotion allied 
with the sense of power or great expenditure of force, yet 
without the feeliug of painful exhausting effort. I refer it to 
the complex sensibility of the eye to colour, expanse, and 
distance ; an aggregate of large and keen sensibility in a 
minute organ, highly pleasurable for a considerable length of 
time, and pre-eminently enduring and recoverable as an intel- 
lectual element. This is the simplest form of the feeling that 
we term the sublime. 

I maj also notice the difference of emotion in straight and 
in curved forms. Curves appear to gratify the liking we have 
for waxing and waning motions, as explained when speaking 
of movements. For this among other reasons to be afterwards 
considered, they are in general more pleasing than straight 
forms. Of the three dimensions of space, the up and down is 
more impressive than the lateral dimension, owing to the sense 
of weight and support that comes to be inseparable from 
elevation. 

The intellectual imagery derived through the eye from the 
forms of still life is co-extensive with the visible creation. For 
the purposes of discrimination and of identification of natural 
things, and also for the storing of the mind with knowledge 
and thought, the sensations of objects of sight are available 
beyond any other class. The eye is kept constantly at work 
upon the surrounding scene, following the outlines and wind- 
ings of form, as these extend in every direction ; and by the 
movements thus stimulated each several object is distinguished 
from those that differ in shape, size, or distance, and identified 
with itself and those that coincide with it in these pecu- 
liarities. The train of movements for a square are recognised 
as distinct from the train that describes an oval : the outline 
of a pillar brings on a cycle of motions wholly different from 
those dictated by the figure of a tree. The property belonging 
to the mental system of causing movements to cohere that 
have been described in succession, fixes the series for each 
different view, and gives a permanent hold of all the distinct 
forms presented to the eye. This cohering and storing up 



248 



SENSE OF SIGHT. 



process belongs to the intellect, and will be fully treated of in 
the proper place. What is chiefly notable here is the fact 
that the impressions of light made on the retina of the eye, 
and the accompanying muscular iinpressions rising out of its 
form-tracing mobility, are, both the one and the other, of a 
very enduring kind ; they take on the coherence that gives them 
an existence after the fact more easily than any other class of 
sensible impressions. Neither tastes, nor smells, nor touches, 
nor sounds, can compare with sights in the property of mental 
persistence and revivability. Probably no other muscles are 
equal in susceptibility to the muscles of the eye ; hence their 
educational accomplishments, that is to say, the number of 
separate forms and combinations that they can retain a hold 
of, is pre-eminent among the acquirements of the muscular 
system. 



f. 



CHAPTER III. 
OF THE APPETITES. 

IN taking up at this stage the consideration of the Ap- 
petites, I do not mean to assert that these entirely 
belong to our primitive impulses, or that in them the opera- 
tion of intellect and experience is excluded. On the contrary, 
I am of opinion that Appetite, being a species or form of 
Volition, is like all our other effective forms of volition, a 
combination of instinct and education. But the process of 
acquisition is in this case simple and short; while, on the 
other hand, the stimulus to action, or the source of the 
craving, is usually one of the sensations or feelings discussed 
in the two previous chapters. Indeed, if we look at the 
craving alone, without reference to the action for appeasing 
it, that craving is merely what we have all along styled the 
volitional property of the sensation. Accordingly there is a 
certain convenience in passing at once from the subject just 
left, to advert more particularly to this special aspect of 
certain of the feelings therein delineated that have their chief 
interest in the circumstance in question. 

I have observed that all painful states (the exceptions 
are unimportant in the present discussion), and many plea- 
surable states, are volitional; the one class exciting action for 
appeasing and terminating them, the other for continuance 
or increase. If a spur to action were to constitute Appetite, 
all our pains and a number of our pleasures would come under 
this designation. But the Appetites commonly recognised 
are a select class of the volitional sensations and feelings ; and 
are circumscribed by the following property, — namely, that 
they are the cravings produced by the recurring wants and 
necessities of our bodily, or organic life. The taking in of 
nourishment, the ejection of what is formed to be thrown out, 



250 OF THE APPETITES. 

the supply of air, the alternation of exercise and rest, the 
gratification and repose of the various senses, — all these 
operations are attended to through the prompting of uneasy 
sensation. The avoiding of a scald, a cut, or a fall, is an 
energetic impulse of volition, and yet not a case of Appetite ; 
there being no periodic or recurring want of the system in 
these cases. Sleep, Exercise, Repose, Thirst, Hunger, Sex, 
are the appetites most universally present throughout the 
Animal tribes. 

2. The fact of periodic recurrence is in no case more 
strikingly exemplified than in Sleep. After a certain period 
of waking activity, there supervenes an intense and massive 
sensation, of the nature of a craving for repose. If we give 
way to it at once, the state of sleep creeps over us, and we 
pass through a few moments of luxurious repose into uncon- 
sciousness. If we are prevented from yielding to the sleepy 
orgasm, its character as an appetite is brought out into strong 
relief. The voluminous uneasiness that possesses all the 
muscles and organs of sense stimulates a strong resistance to 
the power that keeps us awake, the uneasiness and the resist- 
ance increasing with the continued refusal of the permission 
to sleep, until the condition becomes intolerable, or a reaction 
ensues, which drives off the drowsiness for some time longer. 

The overpowering influence of drowsiness is best seen in 
infants, there being scarcely anything that will effectually 
appease the mental disturbance caused by it. The strong 
emotions that extreme pain sets loose — tears and rage — are 
never more closely at hand than in the sleepy condition. In 
a comparison of volitional states, to ascertain their respective 
degrees of strength, the appetite for sleep at its highest pitch 
would bear the palm over nearly every form of sensation. 

3. The necessity of alternating Exercise with Rep>ose, 
through the entire range of our active organs, brings on the 
like periodic cravings and deep-seated uneasiness. The fresh 
condition of the muscles is of itself a sufficient stimulus to 
action ; without any conscious end, in other words, without 
our willing it, action commences when the body is refreshed 
and invigorated. If this spontaneous outburst is resisted, an 



EXERCISE AND REPOSE. 251 

intense uneasiness or craving is felt, being one of the conscious 
states incident to the muscular system. This craving is of the 
nature of all the other appetites, and increases with privation, 
unless, by some organic change, the fit passes over for the time. 
The dog chained up to his couch, the exuberanc}' of childhood 
restrained from bursting out, the bird in its cage, the prisoner 
in his cell, experience all the pains and desire of the active 
organs for exercise. On the other hand, after exercise comes an 
equally powerful craving and impulse to rest, which, if resisted, 
produces the same intense uneasiness, until a febrile reaction 
ensues, and disorders the indications that the system gives 
respecting its wants. 

Under this head of Exercise and Repose I may include the 
more active of our senses, that is, Touch, Hearing, and Sight. 
These senses all embody muscular activity along with the 
sensation peculiar to each ; and both the muscular activity 
and the tactile, auditory and visual sensations, lead to weariness 
of the parts, with a craving for rest ; while after due repose 
they resume the fresh condition, and crave for the renewal of 
their excitement. But the alternation of exercise and rest of 
the senses is in a great measure involved in the rotation of 
sleeping and waking ; inasmuch as the involuntary torpor of 
the nervous system is almost the only means of giving repose to 
such constantly solicited senses as Sight, Touch, and Hearing. 

A similar train of remarks might be extended to the 
activity of the thinking organs. But in these the periodic 
cravings are less distinctly marked, and more frequently 
erroneous than in the case of muscular exercise. There is 
often a reluctance to engage in thought, when the brain is 
perfectly vigorous and able to sustain it ; and on the other 
hand, there is in nervous temperaments a tendency to excess 
of mental action, uncorrected by any regular promptings to 
take repose. 

I may further remark, what is probably familiar to most 
persons, that a sense of fatigue often arises soon after com- 
mencing any laborious operation, which disappears after a 
time, and is not connected with real exhaustion. . 

4. Thirst and Hunger I have already touched upon. In 



252 OF THE APPETITES. 

describing them as Sensations, it was impossible to omit their 
character as cravings. A certain amount of liquid being indis- 
pensable to every function of the system, a deficiency in this 
element breeds a wide-spread disorder and intolerable oppres- 
sion. Not in the stomach alone, but also in the skin, in the 
capillary circulation, and in the various secreting organs, may 
we infer that the want of water rouses up sensations of distress. 
The prompting to seek out and imbibe liquid is corre- 
spondingly great, in spite of the enfeebling influence of the 
state upon the activity of the frame. 

' What is called thirst is, however, sometimes rather a call 
for the cooling influence of cold drinks, as, for instance, in the 
dry, hot state of the air-passages, mouth, and skin, produced 
in fevers by the increased temperature and diminished 
turgescence of the parts. Exhalation is in such cases often 
rather diminished, and the dryness of the surface arises from 
the circumstance that although blood still flows through the 
capillary vessels, the reciprocal action between the blood and 
the living tissues, which is denominated turgescence, or turgor 
vitalis, is depressed/* 

Hunger, unlike Thirst, is a state of the stomach as yet not 
exactly understood, while the feeling of inanition that also 
grows out of long fasting must be considered as a general 
feeling of the system. The urgency of hunger ought to be in 
accordance with the actual deficiency of nutritive material, 
but very frequently the case is otherwise. 'It is heightened 
by cold baths, by friction of the skin, by friction of the 
abdomen, and by the agitation to which the abdomen is sub- 
jected in horse exercise, as well as by muscular exertion/ It 
is diminished by all nauseating influences, which probably at 
the same time weaken the digestion. ' The local sensations of 
hunger/ says Miiller, ' which are limited to the digestive 
organs, and appear to have their seat in the nervous vagus, 
are feelings of pressure, of motion, contraction, qualmishness, 
with borborygmi (gripings), and finally pain/ 

In the case of hunger and in most of the appetites there is 



* Miiller, by Baly, p. 530. 



THIRST AND HUNGER. 253 

a double spur to the taking of food ; first, the stimulus of 
uneasiness, and next the impulse arising out of the pleasure of 
eating. It is well understood that these two things are quite 
different, for on their difference hangs the whole art of refined 
cookery. Very plain food would satisfy the craving for nutri- 
tion, but there is a superadded pleasure that we have to cater 
for. The one is the appetite in its strictest signification, and 
as found in the lower animals ; the other I might call a 
desire, because it supposes the remembrance and anticipa- 
tion of a positive pleasure, like the desire for music, or for 
knowledge. 

It is in the act of taking food and drink that we best see 
exemplified the activity springing out of the sensations of 
hunger and thirst. The actual assuaging of the uneasiness 
produces an intense pleasurable sensation that sets on the most 
vigorous movements for being continued and increased ; while 
the moving organs themselves, beginning to be invigorated, 
display a spontaneous and lively energy in the cause. To 
bring together and make to cohere the sensation of the ap- 
peasing of hunger with the acts of sucking, swallowing, or 
prehension, is perhaps the earliest link of volition established 
in the animal system. This is the first case of action for an 
end, or under the prompting and guidance of a feeling, that 
the newly born infant is capable of. Eating is the most 
animated display of movement and action that a healthy car- 
nivorous creature can present. There is something intensely 
kindling in the appetite of the carnivora for food, which 
rises to fury when the flesh is scented out and begins to be 
tasted. 

Besides the natural craving for the elements of nutrition 
required by the tissues, we may acquire artificial cravings by 
the habitual use of certain forms of food, and certain accom- 
paniments, as peppers, flavours, &c. Thus we have the alco- 
holic craving, the craving for animal food, for tea, coffee, &c. 
The use of these articles having given a peculiar tone to the 
stomach or the nerves, a want is felt when they are withheld; 
and according to the degree of uneasiness manifested is the 
difficulty of resisting them. 



254f OF THE APPETITES. 

5. The Appetite that brings the Sexes together is founded 
on certain secretions which periodically accumulate within the 
system, producing a feeling of oppression until they are either 
discharged or absorbed, there being a certain intense pleasure 
in discharging them for the ends of reproduction. If we were 
to place these feelings among Sensations, they would either 
form a class apart, or they would fall under the first class 
above described, namely, the Sensations of Organic Life. If 
the subject were open to full discussion, like the other feelings 
of human nature, it might be best to treat them as the founda- 
tion of one of the Special Emotions expounded at large in a 
treatise on Emotion in general. We have in this case as in 
Hunger, both Appetite and Desire ; but we have also, what 
does not occur to a like degree in the former mentioned 
craving, a many-sided susceptibility to inflammation, — through 
all the senses, through the trains of thought, and through 
emotions that are not sensations. The circumstances that 
concur in an individual of one sex to produce the excitement 
in the opposite sex, by sight, sound, or smell, as well as by 
touch, have not hitherto been fully investigated. 

6. The accustomed routine of life leads to a craving almost 
of the nature of Appetite. As the time comes round for each 
stated occupation, there is a tendency or bent to proceed 
with that occupation, and an uneasiness at being restrained : 
the feeling being probably of the same character as that 
arising from confining the fresh and spontaneous energy of 
the frame. 

7. All the appetites are liable to be diseased and perverted, 
so as to give false indications as to what the system needs. 
They are likewise liable to artificial and unseasonable inflam- 
mation, through the presence of the things that stimulate and 
gratify them. In the lower animals, it is assumed, I know not 
with what truth, that appetite rarely errs ; in humanity error 
is extremely common. We are apt to crave for warmth when 
coolness would be more wholesome; we crave for food and 
drink, far beyond the limits of sufficiency ; we indulge in the 
excitement of action when we ought to cultivate rest, or 



INDICATIONS OF APPETITE INSUFFICIENT. 255 

luxuriate in repose to the point of debility. So false is the 
appetite for sleep that it is still a dispute how much the system 
requires. Perhaps the complicacy and conflicting impulses of 
the human frame are the cause of all this uncertainty and 
mistake, rendering it necessary for us to resort to experience 
and science, and a higher volition than appetite, for the 
guidance of our daily life. 



CHAPTER IV. 

OF THE INSTINCTS. 

. TN the present chapter, I mean to consider the various 
-L primitive arrangements for action that may be traced as 
belonging to the human system. It is a part of the plan 
of this work to attempt to strip off the covering of acquired 
faculties, and ascertain what is the original mechanism that 
we start from in making our various acquisitions. This is 
to descend to the instinctive, intuitive, or primordial, in the 
human mind. 

Instinct is defined by being opposed to acquisition, 
education, or experience. We might express it as the un- 
taught ability to perform actions of all kinds, and more 
especially such as are necessary or useful to the animal. In 
it a living being possesses, at the moment of birth, powers of 
acting of the same nature as those subsequently conferred by 
experience and education. When a newly dropped calf stands 
up, walks, and sucks the udder of the cow, we call the actions 
instinctive. 

i. In all the three regions of mind, — Emotion, Volition, 
and Intellect, — there is of necessity a certain primordial 
structure, the foundation of all that a human being ever 
becomes. There are also certain arrangements not included 
in the sphere of consciousness, or mind proper, that yet form 
links in our mental actions; as, for example, the reflex 
movements already noticed. In order to exhaust the 
various primitive arrangements, both unconscious or involun- 
tary, and conscious or voluntary, I shall proceed in the fol- 
lowing order: — 

I. The Reflex Actions. — These are not proper mental 
elements, but their discussion is of value, both because they 
illustrate mind by contrast, and because certain useful func- 



REFLEX ACTIONS. 257 

tions are served by them, such as would otherwise have to be 
provided for by volition, or true mental activity. 

n. The primitive arrangements for combined and har- 
monious actions. These have already been glanced at in 
the description of the functions of the cerebellum. The use 
of the locomotive members, — in walking, flying, swimming, 
&c, — is the most prominent instance. These arrangements, 
if not mental in the strict sense, are at least auxiliary to the 
voluntary operations. 

in. The instinctive play of Emotion, or the primitive 
mechanism provided for the outburst and manifestation 
of feeling. Here I shall have to assume the law of diffusion, 
already hinted at, respecting Emotion or consciousness; the 
verification of this law will not be entered upon in the present 
chapter. 

IV. The instinctive germ of Volition. That activit}^, which 
we call the power of the will, has to be traced back, if pos- 
sible, to some inborn or primitive stimulus, connecting together 
our feelings and our actions, and enabling the one to control 
the other. This is perhaps the most interesting inquiry that 
our science presents. 

The primitive foundations of Intellect, I shall defer till 
the whole subject is entered on in the next Book. 

v. The description of the special mechanism of the Voice 
will receive a place at the conclusion of this chapter. This is 
a subject not to be omitted in a treatise on the Human Mind, 
and I did not think proper to append it to the chapter on 
Action and Movement in general. 

OF THE REFLEX ACTIONS. 

3. In discussing the functions of the Spinal cord and 
Medulla Oblongata, I enumerated the actions termed auto- 
matic or reflex, see p. 47. They are, 1st, those connected 
with Digestion, namely, Deglutition, and the propulsion of the 
food through the alimentary canal. 2nd, Those connected 
with Respiration, including the movements of the lungs in 
Breathing, Coughing, Sneezing. 3rd, The winking of the 



258 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

Eyes. 4th, The permanent contraction of the Muscles. Of 
these some are wholly free from the participation of conscious- 
ness, as Breathing, Alimentary Movements, and Muscular 
Tone. The winking of the eyes is also independent of con- 
sciousness, to this extent, that it operates whether we feel it 
or not, but the action ceases in sleep. Coughing and sneezing 
are essentially conscious, but they are also involuntary ; that 
is, the mechanical irritation works the riddance of itself by a 
reflex act. If a voluntary effort were needed in the case of 
coughing, that effort would probably be made, in answer to 
the painful feeling produced by the substance in contact with 
the surface of the bronchia. In sneezing, the feeling is not 
always painful, but may be simply pungent, as in taking snuff or 
applying the nose to smelling salts. But although these actions 
are usually accompanied with feeling, they may be stimulated 
when we are in an unconscious state. The act of coughing 
will come over a person in sleep from the accumulation of 
phlegm. So, by applying snuff to the nose of a sleeper, the 
sneezing action will be brought on, and will precede and cause 
his awakening. These remarks on the partly unconscious and 
partly conscious character of the automatic actions are 
necessary to clear up the distinction between the actions that 
are properly mental or voluntary, and those that are not. 

4. There is a certain amount of reflex action generated in 
the operation of the various senses. A stimulus of any one of 
the organs of sense, besides rendering us conscious, and 
wakening up the movements constituting the expression of 
feeling, seems to excite a peculiar responsive action in the 
member where the organ is placed, or where the stimulus is 
applied. Thus an object placed in the hand not only gives a 
feeling or sensation of touch, together with the attitudes and 
expressions proper to that feeling, but also directs a special 
response towards the muscles that move the fingers. There is 
a reflex tendency to close the hand upon anything placed on 
the palm, as may be seen by trying the experiment upon 
a child before its voluntary movements are developed, and 
still more strikingly if the child is asleep. If the finger is 
pricked or scalded, there is a keen emotion felt and a lively 



REFLEX ACTIVITY IN THE SENSES. 259 

excitement is seen all over the body in consequence, but the 
movement excited in the arm and hand affected is the most 
vehement of all. This renders it not unlikely that a 
certain number of the nerves rising out of the hand terminate 
in the spinal cord, from which point of termination there 
are reflected back motor fibres to the muscles of the region. 
80 by stimulating the sole of the foot, movements of the leg 
are excited, over and above the general excitement due to 
every sensation according to its intensity. Some physiologists 
regard the contact of the foot with the ground as a stimulus 
that aids in keeping up the act of walking. In like manner, 
by pinching the cheek or the face, the head is put in motion 
even in infants yet unable to localise their sensations, These 
reflected acts are to be included among our useful or practical 
instincts. In the matter of retracting a member from injury, 
the tendency is a protective one. 

In the sense of taste we see a special responsive stimulus of 
the parts about the mouth, where the seat of sensation lies. A 
bitter taste produces wryness and contortion of the mouth : just 
as a bad smell operates most energetically upon the muscles of 
the nose. The responsive action of sight would naturally fall, 
either upon the muscles of the eyeball itself, or upon those 
that surround the orbit, and move the eyebrows and eyelids. 
By an action purely and unconsciously reflex and involuntary 
the pupil of the eye is contracted under a strong light ; by an 
action partly voluntary, but possibly in some degree due to a 
special reflex connexion between the optic centres and the 
muscles of the orbit, the eyelids and eyebrows are drawn 
down under the same influence. This last action I would 
compare to the retractation of a pinched limb, the wry mouth 
under a bad taste, and the contortions of the nose by a 
powerful smell. I do not profess to attach very great impor- 
tance to this sensori-renex action, the whole extent of the 
influence of it being, as I think, but small ; so much so that 
it would be difficult to supply an incontestable proof of its 
being precisely of the nature that I here suppose. At one 
time I was disposed to agree with Dr. Carpenter's view of 
Sensori-motor actions as a class apart from others, and having 

s 2 



260 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

a distinct and prominent efficiency, but although I freely 
admit the principle of a sensori-motor excitement directed 
especially to the organs where the seat of sensation is lodged, 
I think it comparatively (not entirely) insignificant both in 
nature and in amount.* 



* Dr. Carpenter, in endeavouring to constitute a class of sensori-motor 
actions {Human Physiology, § 748, 4th edit.), has laid hold of a number 
of movements and effects due, as I conceive, to the proper diffusive influence 
of emotion. ' The involuntary laughter produced by tickling' is a part of 
the emotional excitement of feeling, just as the contortions of the system 
under pain are a part of the pain. If it he true, as I believe, that every 
emotional state has a diffusive influence over the body, just in proportion to 
the intensity of the emotion or consciousness, an infinity of movement and 
display must follow from the causes that stimulate pleasure or pain. So, 
again, to select another instance from Dr. Carpenter's enumeration, ' those 
involuntary movements of the body and limbs, excited by uneasy sensation, 
(probably muscular), which are commonly designated as the ' fidgets;" — 
this is exactly the description of an emotional outburst or expression of 
pain, like a start, or a groan, or a puckered countenance. He goes on to 
say, ' when the reflex activity of the sensory ganglia is more strongly excited, 
in consequence either of an unusual potency of the sensory impressions 
[that is, the sensations or feelings], or of an unusual excitability of these 
nervous centres, a much greater variety of sensori-motor actions is wit- 
nessed.' In other words, as the impressions are stronger, the diffused 
excitement is greater. This happens, however, not in the case of any limited 
number or class of sensations, but under every possible emotion that can 
occur to the human mind. A feeling that produces a certain excitement 
when feeble, produces a stronger and more varied display by being made 
stronger ; the fact being, that such display and such movements are a con- 
stituent element of feeling, a part of its embodiment in the human frame. 
The movements and cries of animals during a tempest might be called 
sensori-motor actions ; they are more properly termed, I think, the move- 
ments belonging to the emotional condition of the mind for the time being. 
These movements incorporated in our constitution as a portion of the 
very fact of being conscious, (we are often said to be ' moved,' when it is only 
meant that an impression is made on the mind), ma} r be called ' sensori-motor,' 
inasmuch as a sensation, when sufficiently powerful, always visibly stimu- 
lates them, rendering them, as it were, the return or response of the outward 
impression. They may also be styled ' reflex,' for the very same reason. 
They are, farther, ' involuntary' movements, being quite distinct from our 
volitional acts. But the}' are very far from being unconscious: they are, if 
I am not mistaken, inseparable from consciousness, being entwined with 
the conscious condition in the mechanism of our frame. When conscious- 
ness is feebly excited so are they, so feebly that no visible manifestation 
results ; when a stronger excitement is applied, they waken up in propor- 
tion. In a cultivated shape, they make the gesticulation and display that 
constitutes the usual expression or natural language of feeling, which no 
man and no people is devoid of, while some nations show it in a remark- 
able degree. The painter, sculptor, poet, actor, seize hold of these movements 



261 



OF THE PRIMITIVE COMBINED MOVEMENTS. 

5. The explanation already gone into respecting the func- 
tions of the cerebellum has led us to recognise certain cases 
of concurring or associated movements, wherein the associating 
link is found in the original conformation of the nerves and 
nerve centres. The movements of the two eyes are an ex- 
ample ; it is by no process of education that the e} r es go always 
together. Again, there are instances of regular sequences of 
movement, as in the successive strokes of the heart's action, 
the alternating movements of breathing, the movements of 
the pharynx, gullet, and intestines for propelling the food in 
its course through the system. There is a pre-established con- 
nexion between the consecutive acts in these various func- 
tions, such that when one movement is completed, this brings 
on the next, and so on, without intermission. It is interest- 
ing for us to find out to what lengths these pre-established 
arrangements are carried in the animal, and especially in the 
human, system. My object all through the present chapter 
is to ascertain what number of our actions grow out of primi- 
tive impulses of the muscular and nervous mechanism, in 
other words, what is the range or capability of the original 
structure of our being. 

I regret to say that on this subject less assistance is to be 
derived from Physiologists than one would naturally have 
expected. Much has been written on the mechanism of 
animal movements, but I have not met with any writer that 



as the basis of artistic forms; and the interest of the human presence is 
greatly dependent on them, and on the attitudes that result from them. 

If I am correct in supposing that these so-called ' sensori-motor ' actions 
are the movements due to the state of feeling or emotion that a sensible 
stimulus kindles, then the cerebral hemispheres are essential to their mani- 
festation, for the cerebrum is proved to be indispensable to consciousness. 
Indeed, the wonderful and various diffusion of active display, that any 
intense feeling seems to require, as the physical part of its essence, can 
hardly be operated without that intermedium of multifarious connexion 
between all parts of the frame, which the cerebrum, with its masses of white 
conducting fibres, appears to afford. 



262 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

has aimed at separating the primitive tendencies from the 
acquired Thus, for example, while the locomotive action has 
been most abundantly analysed, no attempt has been made to 
settle how far the original structure of the nerve centres 
determines the alternating movements of the limbs requisite 
for this function. It seems constantly assumed that, in the 
human subject at least, the power of walking is wholly acquired, 
like playing on the trumpet or handling a musket, an assump- 
tion that I feel myself compelled to dissent from for reasons 
to be presently adduced. Whether any physiologist of emi- 
nence would stand forward and deliberately affirm and defend 
what is thus tacitly assumed, I cannot pretend to say. 

6. The locomotive rhythm involves all the arrangements 
that I regard as primitive in the class of combined movements 
of succession, apart from those organic movements of heart, 
lungs, and intestines above alluded to. I shall therefore pro- 
ceed to adduce the grounds for believing that the combined 
movements of locomotion are original or instinctive. 

(i.) The analogy of the inferior quadrupeds is in favour of 
the existence of a germ of locomotive harmony of the limbs 
in man. The community of structure of the vertebrate type is 
sufficiently close to involve such a deep peculiarity of the 
nervous system as this. That which nature has done for the 
calf towards one of the essential accomplishments of an animal, 
is likely to be done in some degree for man. To equip a 
creature for walking erect would doubtless be far more diffi- 
cult, and might surpass the utmost limits of the primitive 
structural arrangements ; but seeing that the very same alter- 
nation of limb enters into both kinds, and that nature gives 
this power of alternation in the one case, we may fairly suppose 
that the same power is given in the other also. 

(2.) It is a matter of fact and observation, that the alter- 
nation of the lower limbs is instinctive in man. I appeal to 
the spontaneous movements of infancy as the proof. Mark a 
child jumping in the arms, or lying on its back kicking ; 
observe the action of the two legs, and you will find that the 
child shoots them out by turns with great vigour and rapidity. 
Notice also when it first puts its feet to the ground ; long 



RECIPROCATION OF MOVING MEMBERS. 263 

before it can balance itself, we may see it alternating the limbs 
to a full walking sweep. It is in virtue of this instinctive 
alternation that walking is so soon possible to be attained. 
No other combination equally complex could be acquired at 
the end of the first year. Both a vigorous spontaneous im- 
pulse to move the lower limbs, and a rhythmical or alternating 
direction given to this impulse, are concerned in this very early 
acquisition. Let the attempt be made to teach a child to 
walk sidewise at the same age, and we should entirely fail for 
want of a primitive tendency to commence upon. 

(3.) It has been already seen that the cerebellum is con- 
cerned in the maintenance of combined or co-ordinated move- 
menta It is proved that these movements can be sustained 
without the cerebral hemispheres, but not without the cere- 
bellum. But that the cerebellum should be well developed 
in man, and yet not be able to effect those harmonized arrange- 
ments found in the inferior vertebrata, is altogether im- 
probable. 

Unless some mode of invalidating these facts can be 
pointed out, the reasonable conclusion will be that there is in 
the human subject a pre-established adaptation for loco- 
motive movements, which adaptation I shall now attempt to 
analyse. 

7. First, it involves the reciprocation or vibration of the 
limb. Confining ourselves to one leg, we can see that this 
swings back and fore like a pendulum, implying that there is 
a nervous arrangement such that the completed movement 
forward sets on the commencing movement backward, and 
conversely. The cerebellum, or some other centre, must be so 
connected with the two antagonizing classes of muscles, that 
when one class has completed a contraction, a stimulus shall be 
transmitted to a ganglionic mass with returning nerves to the 
other class, by which nerves these are stimulated in turn, and 
on contracting repay the act by reviving the operation of the 
first. The two antagonist sets of muscles concerned in walking 
are chiefly members of the two great general divisions of flexor 
and extensor muscles. Every moving member must have 
two opposing muscles or sets of muscles attached to it, and 



264 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

between these the limb is moved to and fro at pleasure. 
Now the analogy of the limbs would justify us in supposing 
that there is an organized connexion between antagonist 
muscles generally, so as to give spontaneously a swinging or 
reciprocating movement to the parts ; in other words, that 
when any member is carried to its full swing in one direction, 
there is an impulse generated and diffused towards the op- 
posing muscles to bring it back or carry it in the other direc- 
tion. This impulse may be feeble, may be very unequal in 
different parts, or may be entirely overborne, but I am dis- 
posed to look upon it as a pretty general result of muscular 
and nervous organization. Of course this reaction will be 
most strongly brought out on occasions when the commencing 
movement takes a wide and energetic sweep. Thus in a 
swing of the arm carried up so as to point perpendicularly 
upward, I think we may discern an impulse in the opposing 
muscles to come into play in order to bring it back. Every 
swinging motion, whether of arm, leg, trunk, head, jaw, if not 
entirely due to volition, which it would be difficult to prove, 
must be supported by an arrangement of the nature now 
described.* 



* On the antagonism of muscular movements generally, I quote the 
following statements from M filler: — 

' There are groups of muscles opposed to each other in their action in 
almost all parts of the body. The extremities have flexors and extensors, 
supinators and pronators, abductors and adductors, and rotators inwards and 
rotators outwards. Frequently the opposed groups of muscles have different 
nerves. Thus the flexors of the hand and fingers derive their nervous fibrils 
from the median and ulnar nerves; the extensors theirs from the radial 
nerve; the flexors of the fore-arni are supplied by the musculo-cutaneous; 
the extensors by the radial nerve. The crural nerve supplies the nervous 
fibres for the extensors of the leg; the ischiadic those for the flexors. The 
perineal muscles, which raise the outer border of the foot, derive their 
nervous fibres from the perineal nerve; the tibialis posticus, which raises 
the inner border of the foot, is supplied by the tibial nerve. The circum- 
stance of the convulsive motions in affections of the spinal cord being fre- 
quently such as to curve the body in a particular direction, shows that there 
must be something in the disposition of the nervous fibres in the central 
organs which facilitates the simultaneous excitement to action of particular 
sets of muscles, as the flexors, or extensors, &c. ; although Bellingeri's 
opinion, that the anterior columns of the spinal cord serve for the motions of 
flexion, the posterior for those of extension, is based on no sufficient facts. 
Too much importance, however, must not be given to the above remark 
relative to distinct nerves supplying the different groups of muscles j it is 



ALTERNATION OF MOVEMENTS. 265 

I do not overlook the fact that in certain cases an anta- 
gonism not muscular occurs to bring about a returning 
vibratory impulse. Thus in walking there is a pendulous 
swiDg of the leg, arising out of mere mechanical causes. Like 
any other body hanging loose, the leg is really and truly a 
pendulum, and when thrown back begins to move forward of 
its own accord. Again, the extensor muscles, which maintain 
the body in an erect position, are antagonised by the weight 
of the parts ; hence in dancing up and down, the downward 
movement may take place by simply relaxing the tension of 
the supporting muscles. In the same manner the jaw would 
drop of its own accord. We must also allow for the natural 
tendency to relax a muscle freely, after a great effort, whereby 
the ordinary tension of its antagonist coming into play would 
overpower it. It is difficult to say how much is due to this 
cause, or how far a muscle by being dilated to the full stretch 
is, by virtue of that circumstance, rendered more ready to con- 
tract, in other words, stimulated. But notwithstanding all 
these considerations, I feel compelled to suppose a specific 
arrangement in the nervous centres for bringing about alter- 
nate movements of the class now described. We know such 
an arrangement to exist in the involuntary movements of the 
heart, lungs and intestines, and we are therefore justified in 
interpreting similar tendencies to alternation among voluntary 
muscles on the same principle of mechanism. 

8. Secondly, there is further implied in locomotion, an 
alternate movement of corresponding limbs, or an alternation 
of the two sides of the body. After one leg has made its for- 
ward sweep, an impulse must be given to the other leg to 
commence a movement in the same course. The two sides of 



not a constant fact. Sometimes the same nerve gives branches to muscles 
opposed in action; the ninth, or hypo-glossal nerve, supplies both the 
muscles which draw the hyoid bone forwards, and one muscle which retracts 
it, tbe perineal nerve supplies the perineal muscles, which raise the outer 
border of the foot, and the tibialis anticus, which opposes this motion. 
Antagonist muscles can, moreover, be most easily made to combine in 
action; thus the perineal muscles and the anterior tibial, acting together, 
raise the foot. The flexor carpi radialis and the extensor carpi radialis can 
combine so as to abduct the hand.'— p. 925. 



266 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

the body must be so related, that the full stretch of the 
muscles of the one side originates a stimulus to those of the 
other. Nothing less would suffice to enable a new-born calf to 
walk. The alternation between the right and left legs, both 
fore and hind, must be firmly established in the animal's 
organization by a proper arrangement of the nerves and nerve 
centres. And if the power of walking in human beings be 
assisted by primitive impulses and arrangements, this specific 
provision is necessarily implied. The commissural nervous 
connexions between the two sides, in the spinal cord, medulla 
oblongata, cerebellum, &c, will have to transmit indications 
from one side to the other with the view of bringing on the 
due rhythm or alternation of right and left members. 

The alternation of the two sides in locomotion extends 
much beyond the muscles of the limbs ; the whole trunk and 
head sway in harmony with the members, both in quadrupeds 
and in man. 

There are some important exceptions to this alternating 
arrangement, but these are of a kind to place in a stronger 
light the examples of it now quoted. The two ej^es are made 
to move together, and never alternate. This too demands an 
express commissural connexion of the nerve centres, even 
more decided than the other case. No question can arise 
about this being a primitive fact of the mechanism ; the 
arrangement is the most prominent, but not the only, example 
of associated simultaneous movements, depending on the 
structure of the nerve centres. It has doubtless much to do 
with the unity and singleness of the act of vision. If also we 
observe the early movements of the arms in children, we shall 
find in them more of the tendency to act together than to 
alternate, showing, as we might otherwise infer, that the im- 
pulse of alternation of the limbs is not so deep-seated an instinct 
in man as in quadrupeds. In like manner the movements of 
the features are for the most part the same on both sides of 
the face. Both classes of facts must proceed upon commissural 
nervous connexions, but while in some cases the one kind of 
connexion seems to prevail, the alternating, in the others the 
associating connexion is strongest. 



VERMICULAR MOVEMENT. 267 

9. Thirdly. The locomotion of animals moving on all fours 
suggests a further necessity of primitive adjustment. It is 
requisite that there should be some provision for keeping the 
fore and hind legs iu proper relation and rhythm. Something 
of the nature of the vermicular movement, (that is, the loco- 
motion of worms) or the movements of the alimentary canal, 
would need to be assumed in this case. Such a connexion 
must exist between the fore and hind segments in order that 
the movements of the one may stimulate in succession the 
movements of the other, by a nervous propagation along the 
spinal cord to the cerebellum, or other centre governing the 
instinctive rhythmical motions. In the crawling of reptiles it 
is obvious that the muscular contraction in one segment or 
circle must yield a stimulus to a nerve in connexion with the 
next circle, which is made to contract in consequence, and 
furnish a stimulus to the third, and so on through the whole 
line of the body : the action of the intestines being precisely 
the same. I cannot conceive how quadrupeds could walk as 
they do without a provision of a similar kind. In a dog we 
see the movement of the limbs propagated to the tail. Each 
species of animal has its particular formula of ordering the legs 
in walking, determined it may be in part by the shape of the 
body, but duly transmitted in the breed as a property of its 
structure. The shamble of the elephant represents one 
species of rhythm, while the horse can pass through all the 
varieties of trot, gallop, and canter. In climbing, too, both the 
alternation and propagation come into play as helps. In 
swimming, both are likewise apparent. 

10. Fourthly. I must now mention more particularly the 
associated or consensual movements, or those that are so 
connected as to act together. Here we need an organization 
of a different kind from the foregoing. The combining or 
associated muscles have to be supplied with a common nerve, 
so that the .stimulus of one is a stimulus of the whole group 
that are in union. The most perfect example of this is the 
eye. In order to make the two eyes act together, the cor- 
responding muscles of each must be simultaneously excited 



268 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

by the nerves. The following are the facts connected with 
this interesting case. I quote again from Miiller. 

' Some of the most remarkable facts illustrating the asso- 
ciation and antagonism of muscular actions, are presented 
by the muscles which move the eyes. The corresponding 
branches of the third, or motor oculi, nerve of the two sides 
have a remarkable innate tendency to consensual action, a 
tendency which cannot be ascribed to habit. The two eyes, 
whether moved upwards, downwards, or inwards, must always 
move together; it is quite impossible to direct one eye upwards 
and the other downwards at the same time. This tendency 
to consensual action is evidenced from the time of birth ; it 
must therefore be owing to some peculiarity of structure at 
the origins of the two nerves. The association in action ol 
the corresponding branches of the two nervi motores oculi, 
renders the absence of such tendency to consensual motion in 
the two external recti muscles and the sixth nerves more 
striking. We do, it is true, in a certain measure cause the 
two external recti muscles to act together when we restore 
the two eyes, of which the axes are converging, to the parallel 
direction ; but there the power of consensual action ends ; the 
two eyes can never be made to diverge, however great the 
effort exerted to do so. There is an innate tendency and irre- 
sistible impulse in the corresponding branches of the third 
nerve to associate action; while in the sixth nerves not only 
is this tendency absent, but the strong action of one of these 
nerves is incompatible with the action of the other. These 
innate tendencies, in the third and sixth nerves, are extremely 
important for the functions of vision : for if, in place of the 
sixth nerves, the external recti muscles had received each a 
branch of the third nerve, it would have been impossible to 
make one of these muscles act without the other ; one eye, for 
example, could not have been directed inwards while the 
other was directed outwards, so as to preserve the parallelism, 
or convergence of their axes, but they would necessarily have 
diverged when one rectus externus had been made to act 
voluntarily. To render possible the motion of one eye in- 
wards, while the other is directed outwards, the external 



ASSOCIATED ACTIONS. 269 

straight muscles have received nerves which have no ten- 
dency to consensual action. In consequence, however, of the 
tendency in the two internal straight muscles to associate 
motion, it is necessary when one eye is directed inwards and 
the other outwards, that the contraction of the rectus externus 
of the latter should be so strong as to overcome the associate 
action of the rectus internus of the same eye; and in the 
effort to direct one eye completely outwards, we actually feel 
this stronger contraction of the external rectus. These consi- 
derations enable us to understand perfectly the hitherto enig- 
matical fact that, in all vertebrata, the external rectus muscle 
receives a special nerve/ (p. 929.) The author then goes on 
to show the relation of the corresponding oblique muscles to 
each other, and the similar reason there is for having distinct 
nerves to the superior oblique or trochlear muscle. 

An association exists between the adjustment of the iris 
and the other movements of the eye; thus, whenever the 
eye is voluntarily directed inwards, the iris contracts. This 
brings about the fact already stated, that the iris is contracted 
during near vision. 

Miiller also remarks that ' the motions very prone to be 
associated involuntarily, are those of the corresponding parts 
of the two sides of the body. The motions of the irides, of 
the muscles of the ear, of the eyelids, and of the extremities, 
in the attempt to effect opposed motions, are examples of 
such associations^ I have already remarked that this coin- 
cidence of movements on the two sides, co-exists, in the 
case of the limbs at least, with an organization for an alter- 
nating motion. 

The same author further observes, that ' the less perfect 
the action of the nervous sytem, the more frequently do asso- 
ciate motions occur. It is only by education that we acquire 
the power of confining the influence of volition in the pro- 
duction of voluntary motions to a certain number of nervous 
fibres issuing from the brain. An awkward person, in per- 
forming one voluntary movement makes many others, which 
are produced involuntarily by consensual nervous action/ 
(p. 938.) This, however, introduces much larger considerations, 



270 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

involving the whole mechanism of emotion and volition, and 
cannot be done justice to in the present connexion. 

ii. Fifthly. There are various appearances that suggest 
the existence of a law of general harmony of state throughout 
the muscular system. In stretching the lower limbs we feel 
at the same time an impulse to stretch the arms, the trunk, 
the head, and the features, or to put in action the whole class 
of extensor or erector muscles. The act of yawning propagates 
a movement over the whole body. I cannot positively affirm 
that this may not be explained by similarity of state producing 
everywhere a similar impulse, but the appearances are more 
in favour of a certain organized connexion that operates in 
producing a harmony of condition. When the eye is gazing 
attentively on an object, the whole body is spontaneously 
arrested, the features are tensed, the mouth open ; the same 
harmonizing fixity is observed in the act of listening. So a 
movement in one part propagates itself to other parts unless a 
special check is maintained. The movements of the eye 
excite the whole body. Vocal utterance brings on gesticula- 
tion. The pace of movement is also rendered harmonious. 
Rapid movements of the eye from exciting spectacles make all 
the other movements rapid. Slow speech is accompanied by 
languid gestures. In rapid walking, the very thoughts are 
quickened. 

I feel a difficulty in classing these movements with the 
foregoing, on account of the emotional element that is present 
in them rendering them more probably a portion of the 
complex fact of emotion. The other movements are cere- 
bellar, these are more likely to be cerebral. Nevertheless, 
although they are connected with emotion or consciousness, 
they are to be ranked among the primitive impulses that 
serve the useful ends of the animal ; they count among the 
practical instincts now under discussion. They cause the 
animal to come into harmony with the circumstances that sur- 
round it, — to be quiet when the scene is still, to rouse up and 
join the chase when others are stirring. 

This property imparts character to individuals. A person 
is either slow, or vivacious, generally ; the cast of movement 



ONE SENSE ACTING FOR ANOTHER. 271 

is the same in all organs, in action and in thought. From it 
arises, likewise, a means of rousing and controlling the actions, 
thoughts, and passions of men and animals. It is a fact too 
pervading and important to be dismissed with this brief 
allusion ; we shall have to recur to it afterwards, if we are 
ever enabled to overtake the entire subject of mind. 

12. Sixthly. There are certain primitive links between 
different sensations that deserve to be noticed in an attempt 
like the present to set forth all that is instinctive in the 
animal constitution. I refer to those cases where one sense 
can apparently act for another previous to experience, as when 
an animal detects wholesome or unwholesome food by the smell 
before tasting it. That the sense of taste should act to inform 
us of what is good for digestion (which it does to an imperfect 
degree in the human subject), is not surprising, seeing that in 
the mouth the alimentary canal is already commenced ; we 
feel more difficulty in discovering how smell should have this 
power of anticipating digestion and nutrition. An instinctive 
connexion of a like nature is exhibited in the aquatic birds, 
who are said to recognise water by sight, that is, to connect 
the view of water with the use of their swimming organs. 

With regard to the first of these two cases, the pre-esta- 
blished association between smell and digestion, I would 
remark that the effluvia that bodies emit to the nostrils may 
be a specimen or representative of their substance as applied 
to the stomach, and may have something of a like effect on 
the nervous system. We know that the smell of putridity 
causes loathing and disgust, and that an attempt to eat such 
material would only complete the effect already begun; while, 
on the other hand, substances that have a fresh or sweet 
flavour would in all probability be free from nausea in the 
stomach. The fact may be, that the disgust is often excited 
not by the stomachic contact so much as by the offensive 
effluvia or smell developed in the act of eating; in which 
case the forewarning of the olfactory sense would be simply 
to protect itself. 

On the general fact of one sense acting for another by way 
of warning or invitation, it is to be remarked that a deep 



272 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

harmony appears to exist among the different senses, in con- 
sequence of which we apply common epithets to the objects 
of all of them. Thus the effect we call ' freshness/ deter- 
mined, I have no doubt, by the stimulus of the lungs, the 
digestion, or the general nervous tone, is brought out through 
all the senses. The only difficulty is to find the same external 
object, acting in the same manner upon two or more of them, 
as in the case of discerning food by the sight, or by the smell. 
I am disposed to think that these coincidences recognised 
before experience are very few in number, and that the great 
safeguard of animals lies in making the direct experiment of 
eating what comes in their way, and deciding according to the 
feelings that result therefrom.* 

OF THE INSTINCTIVE PLAY OF EMOTION. 

13. In following out our present object, which is to pass 
in i - eview all that is primitive among the impulses and sus- 
ceptibilities of the mental system, an explanation must be 
given of the instinctive or original mechanism for the expres- 
sion of Emotion.f It is well known that some of the most 
conspicuous among the manifestations of human feeling, as 
Laughter and Tears, belong to us from our birth. Education 



* It is a fact that lambs commence eating, not the short tender grass, 
but tlie long and dried tops. 

f I have already referred (see § 4 of this chapter, and p. 86), to the 
general law which I believe connects together emotion or feeling and those 
physical activities of the frame known as the expression or manifestation of 
feeling. The movements and display caused by mental excitement have 
been generally regarded as merely incidental to certain of the stronger feel- 
ings, and little attention has been paid to them in the scientific considera- 
tion of the mind. For my own part, however, I look upon these active 
gestures as a constituent part of the complex fact of consciousness in every 
form and variety. I do not say but that we may have feelings that do 
not give rise to any visible stir of the active members, either in consequence 
of voluntary suppression, or because the diffused stimulus is too weak to 
overcome the inertia of the parts to be moved, — but I mean to affirm that 
with feeling there always is a freely diffused current of nervous activity, 
tending to produce movements, gesture, expression, and all the other effects 
described in the course of the next few pages. It does not fall within the 
scope of my present volume to give the complete elucidation of this general 
principle ; my only desire is that the reader should clearly understand the 
position that I have taken up in this matter. 



MUT-LER ON THE MOVEMENTS OF EXPRESSION. 273 

here finds work in repressing original impulses, no less than 
in imparting new and artificial forms of emotional display. 

It will be convenient to extract entire the section devoted 
to this subject in Muller's Physiology. The professed title 
of the section is, Movements due to the Passions of the 
Mind. 

' It is principally the respiratory portion of the nervous 
system which is involuntarily excited to the production of 
muscular actions by passions of the mind. Here, again, we 
see that any sudden change in the state of the brain, pro- 
pagated to the medulla oblongata, immediately causes a 
change of action in the respiratory muscles, through the 
medium of the respiratory nerves, including the respiratory 
nerve of the face. There are no data for either proving 
or refuting the hypothesis, that the passions have their seat 
of action in a particular part of the brain, whence their 
effects might emanate. But these effects are observed to 
be transmitted in all directions* by the motor nervous 
fibres, which, according to the nature of the passion, are either 
excited or weakened in action, or completely paralysed for 
the time. 

' The exciting passions give rise to spasms, and frequently 
even to convulsive motions affecting the muscles supplied by 
the respiratory and facial nerves. Not only are the features 
distorted, but the actions of the respiratory muscles are so 
changed as to produce the movements of crying, sighing, and 
sobbing. Any passion of whatever nature, if of sufficient 
intensity, may give rise to crying and sobbing. Weeping may 
be produced by joy, pain, anger, or rage. During the sway of 
depressing passions, such as anxiety, fear, or terror, all the 
muscles of the body become relaxed, the motor influence of 
the brain and spinal cord being depressed. The feet will not 
support the body, the features hang as without life, the eye is 
fixed, the look is completely vacant and void of expression, 
the voice feeble or extinct. Frequently the state of the feel- 
ings under the influence of passion is of a mixed character ; 



* Italics mine. 
T 



27^ OF THE INSTINCTS. 

the mind is unable to free itself from the depressing idea, yet 
the effort to conquer this gives rise to an excited action of the 
brain. In these mixed passions the expression of relaxation 
in certain muscles, — in the face, for example, — may be com- 
bined with the active state of others, so that the features are 
distorted, whether in consequence merely of the antagonizing 
action of the opposite muscles being paralysed, or by a really 
convulsive contraction. Frequently also, both in the mixed 
and the depressing passions, some muscles of the face are 
affected with tremors. The voluntary motion of a muscle 
half paralysed by the influence of passion is frequently of a 
tremulous character, in consequence of its being no longer 
completely under the influence of the will. We experience 
this particularly in the muscles of the face, when, during the 
sway of a depressing or mixed passion, we endeavour to excite 
them to voluntary action ; the muscles of the organ of voice 
also, under such circumstances, tremble in their action, and the 
words attempted to be uttered are tremulous. 

' The nerve most prone to indicate the state of the mind 
during passion is the facial ;* it is the nerve of physiognomic 
expression, and its sphere of action becomes more and more 
limited in different animals, in proportion as the features lose 
their mobility and expressive character. In birds, it has no 
influence on the expression of the face ; those only of its 
branches exist which are distributed to the muscles of the 
hyoid bone and the cutaneous muscle of the neck ; and the 
erection of the skin of the neck, or, in some birds, of the ear 
feathers, is in them the only movement by which the facial 
nerve serves to indicate the passions. Next to the facial, the 
respiratory nerves, — those of the internal organs of respiration, 
the laryngeal and phrenic nerves,f as well as those of the 
external thoracic and abdominal muscles, are most susceptible 



* ' The facial nerve is the motor nerve of the face. It is distrihuted to 
the muscles of the ear and of the scalp ; to those of the mouth, nose, and 
eyelids ; and to the cutaneous muscle of the neck.' 

t The laryngeal nerves are distrihuted to the different parts of the 
larynx, and are, therefore, instrumental in stimulating the voice. The 
phrenic, or diaphragmatic nerve, is the special nerve of the diaphragm. 



RESPIRATORY AND FACIAL MOVEMENTS. 275 

of the influence of the passions. But when the disturbance 
of the feelings is very intense, all the spinal nerves become 
affected, to the extent of imperfect paralysis, or the excitement 
of trembling of the whole body. 

' The completely different expression of the features in 
different passions shows that, according to the kind of feeling 
excited, entirely different groups of the fibres of the facial 
nerve are acted on. Of the cause of this we are quite 
ignorant. 

' The disturbed action of the heart during mental emotions 
is a remarkable instance of the influence of the passions over 
the movements of organs supplied by the sympathetic nerve/ 

— P- 93 2 "+ 

14. With regard to the movements of the face, Sir Charles 

Bell is of opinion that many of them are secondary to the 

movements of respiration. He considers the heart and lungs 

as the great primary source of expression, the organs first 

affected by the emotional excitement of the brain. He calls 

attention to ' the extent of the actions of respiration ; the 

remoteness of the parts agitated in sympathy with the heart. 

The act of respiration is not limited to the trunk ; the actions 

of certain muscles of the windpipe, the throat, the lips, the 

nostrils, are necessary to expand those tubes and openings, so 

that the air may be admitted through them in respiration 

with a freedom corresponding to the increased action of the 

chest. Without this, the sides of these pliant tubes would 

fall together, and we should be suffocated by exertion or 

passion. Let us consider how many muscles are combined in 

the single act of breathing — how many are added in the act 

of coughing — how these are changed and modified in sneezing ; 

■ — let us reflect on the various combinations of muscles of the 

throat, windpipe, tongue, lips, in speaking and singing,* and 

we shall be able justly to estimate the extent of the muscles 

which are associated with the proper or simple act of dilating 

and compressing the chest. But how niucli more numerous 



* These, however, are not primitive or instinctive associations, the class 
we are most interested in tracing out at present. 

T 2 



276 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

are the changes wrought upon these muscles when nature 
employs them in the double capacity of communicating our 
thoughts and feelings ; not in the language of sounds merely, 
but in the language of expression of the countenance also ; 
for certainly the one is as much their office as the other/ 

' Let us see how the machine works. Observe a man 
threatened with suffocation: remark the sudden and wild 
energy that pervades every feature; the contractions of his 
throat, the gasping and the spasmodic twitchings of his face, 
the heaving of his chest and shoulders, and how he stretches 
his hand and catches like a drowning man. These are efforts 
made under the oppressive intolerable sensation at his heart ; 
and the means which nature employs, to guard and preserve 
the animal machine, giving to the vital organ a sensibility 
that excites to the utmost exertion/ — Anatomy of Expression, 
3rd Edition, p. 91. 

This last illustration does not decide the point as to the 
dependence of the contortion of the features upon the respi- 
ratory organs, inasmuch as the state of intense pain supposed 
would excite every part of the body by direct action. The 
previous remarks on the necessity there is for movements of 
the respiratory passages, — the throat, mouth, and nostrils, — 
to accompany the action of the lungs, are very much in favour 
of the author's view. 

But that the action on the face is not wholly a conse- 
quence of respiratory excitement is decisively proved by the 
expression of the eyes, for this in no way ministers to the 
breathing function. We are, therefore, bound to presume 
that while a certain amount of the facial expression is due 
to the sympathy or association of the parts with the move- 
ments of the lungs, there still remains a source of independent 
excitement derived from the brain at first hand, and by the 
same common impulse that affects the respiratory, vocal, and 
other organs. This distinctness of action is recognised in the 
passage above quoted from Miiller. 

15. Let us next, therefore, review the parts of the face 
concerned in expression. The muscles of the face, whereby 
all the movements are sustained, are arranged round three 



MUSCLES OF THE EYEBROW. 277 

distinct centres, — the mouth, the nose, and the e) T es. The 
mouth has the largest number of muscles, and is the most 
easily affected by states of feeling. The nose is the least 
endowed with mobility. 

The muscles of the eyebrow have been already pointed out. 
The occipito-frontalis descends over the forehead, and is in- 
serted into the eyebrow; this it raises or arches; it is opposed 
by the corrugator supercilii, which corrugates or wrinkles 
the forehead, drawing the eyebrows together. These are pre- 
eminently muscles of expression, although also employed as 
voluntary muscles for the purposes of vision. They are emo- 
tionally moved by opposite states of feeling, the one in the 
more pleasing emotions, the other in pain, doubt, and em- 
barrassment, and the appearance they cause to a spectator 
comes to suggest, by association, the corresponding states 
of mind. The orbicular muscle of the eyelids, which closes 
the eye, is of the nature of a sphincter, like the muscle sur- 
rounding the mouth and constituting the lips. This is op- 
posed by the levator palpebral, or the elevating muscle of the 
upper eyelid, which opens the eye, both voluntarily and under 
emotion. The tensor tarsi ' is a very thin, small muscle, 
placed at the inner side of the orbit, resting against the 
fibrous covering of the lachrymal sac and behind the tendon 
of the orbicularis/ 

' The corrugator muscle being fixed at its inner extremity, 
draws the eyebrow and eyelid inwards, and throws the skin 
into perpendicular lines or folds, as in frowning. The occipito- 
frontalis will, on the contrary, elevate the brow, and wrinkle 
the skin transversely ; which actions are so frequently repeated 
by most persons, and so constantly by some of a particular 
temperament, that the skin is marked permanently by lines 
in the situations just referred to. The orbicular muscle is the 
sphincter of the eyelids. It closes them firmly, and at the 
same time draws them to the inner angle of the orbit, which 
is its fixed point of attachment. The levator palpehrae is the 
direct antagonist of the orbicular muscle; for it raises the 
upper eyelid, and uncovers the globe of the eye. The tensor 
tarsi draws the eyelids towards the nose, and presses the 



278 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

orifices of the lachrymal ducts closely to the surface of the 
globe of the eye. It may thus facilitate the entrance of the 
tears into the ducts, and promote their passage towards the 
nose.' — Quain, p. 248. 

16. The muscles of the nose are, first, the pyramidal, 
' which rests on the nasal bone, and appears like a prolonga- 
tion of the occipito-frontalis, with whose fibres it is intimately 
connected. It extends from the root of the nose to about 
half-way down, where it becomes tendinous, and unites with 
the compressor nasi. Its chief effect seems to be that of 
giving a fixed point of attachment to the frontal muscle : it 
also wrinkles the skin at the root of the nose/ 

The common elevator of the lip and nose, lies along the 
side and wing of the nose, extending from the inner margin 
of the orbit to the upper lip. It raises the wing of the nose 
and the upper lip together. 

The compressor naris ' is a thin, small triangular muscle, 
which lies close upon the superior maxilla and the side of the 
nose, being transverse from without inwards and upwards/ 
Contrary to its name, the principal action of it must be to* 
expand the nostril by raising the lateral cartilage. This is an 
action in obvious harmony with respiration, seeing that it 
opens the nasal passage/ 

The depressor alee nasi ' is a small flat muscle, lying 
between the mucous membrane and the muscular structure of 
the lip, with which its fibres are closely connected/ 

Of these and other bundles of muscular fibres, traceable 
on the small cartilages of the nose, the only considerable or 
powerful muscle is the common elevator of the lip and nose, 
which is thoroughly under the command of the will, and 
produces a very marked contortion of feature, wrinkling 
the nose and raising the upper lip. In expressing disgust 
at a bad smell, this muscle is very readily brought into 
play, and thence it comes to be employed in expressing 
disgusts generally. It is, however, employed without any 
such intention. 

17. There are ten muscles connected with the movements 
of the mouth. One of them, the orbicularis, is single, and 



MUSCLES OF THE MOUTH. 279 

surrounds and forms the aperture itself, the other nine are 
pairs, and radiate from this as from a centre. 

The proper elevator of the upper lip extends from the 
lower border of the orbit to the upper lip, lying close to the 
border of the common elevator of lip and no.se. When the 
lip is raised without raising the nose, which is not a very easy 
act, this muscle is the instrument. 

The elevator of the angle of the mouth ' lies beneath the 
preceding, and partly concealed by it/ 

' The zygomatici are two narrow fasciculi of muscular 
fibres, extending obliquely from the most prominent point of 
the cheek to the angle of the mouth, one being larger and 
longer than the other/ The elevator of the angle of the 
mouth, and the zygomatic muscles, serve to retract the angle 
of the mouth in smiling; they are therefore muscles of 
expression. 

The two former of these four muscles are concerned in 
raising the upper lip, but they do not act very powerfully, or 
conspicuously. In fact, the upper lip is a feature remarkable 
for fixity, as compared with the under lip, and is not often 
elevated in man, and, on the occasions when it is raised, 
this is done by the common elevator rather than by its own 
proper muscles. 

The region of the lower jaw contains three muscles, the 
depressor of the angle of the mouth, the dej)ressor of the 
lower lip, and the elevator of the lower lip. 

The depressor of the angle of the mouth lies at the side 
and lower part of the face, being extended from the angle of 
the mouth to the lower jaw. 

The depressor of the loiuer lip is a small square muscle, 
lying nearer to the middle line of the chin than the pre- 
ceding, by which it is partly concealed. It arises from the 
fore part of the lower jaw-bone, and is inserted into the lower 
lip, its fibres becoming blended with those of the orbicular 
muscle of the mouth, having been previously united with 
those of its fellow on the opposite side. 

The elevator of the lower lip arises from a slight pit below 
the teeth -sockets of the lower jaw, near the middle line of the 



280 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

jaw, and is inserted into the tegument of the chin, which it 
lifts when in action. 

The remaining muscles of the mouth are unconnected 
with either jaw, having a sort of middle position between 
them. 

' At each side of the face, in the part called the ' cheek/ 
is a muscle, — the buccinator ; and, round the margin of the 
mouth, one — the orbicularis oris. 

' The buccinator is a thin, flat plane of muscular fibres, 
quadrilateral in figure, occupying the interval between the 
jaws/ This muscle is exerted in masticating the food, and 
receives nerves from the same source as the masseter, which 
is one of the principal muscles engaged in the act of 
mastication. 

The orbicularis oris ' belongs to the class of sphincter 
muscles, and like them is elliptic in form, and composed of 
concentric fibres, so placed as to surround the aperture of the 
mouth, but with this peculiarity, that the fibres are not con- 
tinued from one lip into the other. The muscle is flat and 
thin; its inner surface being in contact with the coronary 
artery of the lips, labial glands, and the mucous membrane ; 
the external with the skin and the fibres of the different 
muscles which converge towards the margin of the mouth/ 

' The aperture of the mouth is susceptible of considerable 
dilatation and contraction ; the former being affected by the 
different muscles which converge to it, and which may be 
compared to retractors drawing with different degrees of 
obliquity the lips, or their angles, in the direction of their 
respective points of attachment. The elevators are necessarily 
placed at the upper part of the face, the depressors in the 
opposite situation, and the proper retractors on each side; 
and these are the zygomatici and the buccinators. The 
buccinators also contract and compress the cheeks ; this power 
is brought into play when any substance becomes lodged in 
the interval between them and the jaws/ — Quain, p. 256. 

18. With regard to the instinctive play of those various 
muscles under Emotion, the first remark to be made is, that 
in the gay and pleasing emotions the face is opened out 



OPPOSITE EXPKESSIONS OF THE FACE. 281 

laterally by the action of the muscles that draw the parts 
away from the middle line. The principal muscles engaged in 
this action are the buccinator and zygomatici for the mouth, 
and the occipito -frontalis for the eyebrows. On the other 
hand, in painful states, the features are drawn towards the 
middle line by the action of the corrugator for the eyebrows and 
the orbicularis for the mouth. The expansion and contraction 
are also observable from above downwards; for the action that 
separates the eyebrows lifts them, while the corrugator both 
draws together and depresses the same parts. Again, in the 
mouth, the contraction takes place partly by the closing of the 
lips, but also by the action of two of the muscles of the lower 
lip, namely, the depressor of the angle of the mouth and the 
elevator of the lower lip. These last are remarkably uniform 
in the expression of painful feeling, and are seen at the earliest 
stage of infancy. They curve the mouth downwards, as the 
smile curves it slightly upwards. Thus it is that in painful 
states the features are puckered and contracted, both from 
without inwards and from above downwards ; while in the 
opposite state they are expanded in all ways. 

19. The second remark is, that 'it is often the relaxation 
of a certain class of muscles, more than their excitement, 
which gives expression ; of this, smiling and laughter furnish 
the most apposite examples.' The relaxation of the orbicular 
muscle of the mouth allows the retracting muscles to prepon- 
derate, without any unusual exertion being thrown into those 
muscles. We may even go so far as to assert that while the 
milder forms of gaiety and satisfaction are associated with a 
relaxed state of the orbicular and other muscles, pain produces 
an intense and energetic contraction generally, and this 
intensity is even more a part of its character than the excite- 
ment of special muscles. Thus, in pain we may have an 
energetic expansion of the face as well as a contraction, but 
we are sure to have an intense exertion of some kind or other. 
The tones of the voice are sharp and loud, indicating a vivid 
stimulus of the organs. So in the gestures of the body ; it is 
not easy to specify any one gesture that always accompanies 
a painful excitement, for we usually calculate on seeing a 



282 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

general excitement and energy of gesture in various forms. 
If a person sitting at ease is seized with a painful spasm, the 
excitement will probably throw him into an erect posture ; if 
he happens to be standing, the flexor muscles are likely to be 
stimulated so as to bend or crouch the body with violence. 
When intense pleasure excites the system there is the same 
indiscriminate vehemence of action, and it is only by the more 
expressive organs — the voice and the features — that we know 
which passion is prevailing.* 

20. I remark, in the third place, that a certain class of 
emotional states are marked out by their depressing action, or 
by their depriving all the muscles and motor centres of tone 
and energy. This is noted by Muller in the passage already 
quoted. Terror and grief, especially in their later stages, or 
after a certain amount of excitement has been discharged, are 
of this nature. The depression is first felt, like all other 
emotional stimuli, in the lungs and heart, and passes from 
these to the voice, the features, the carriage. The enfeebled 
respiration is occasionally assisted by a forced or voluntary act 
suggested by the sense of oppression, and this yields a sigh. 
The relaxation of the retractor muscles of the face, from 
exhaustion, has an effect the opposite of the smile, and the 
mouth is undistended, being opened only for the purpose of 
breathing. The whole expression is a sort of undress of the 
features, as during a general weariness. 

' In sorrow, a general languor pervades the whole counte- 
nance. The violence and tension of grief, the lamentations 
and the tumult, like all strong excitements, gradually exhaust 
the frame. Sadness and regret, with depression of spirits and 
fond recollections, succeed ; and lassitude of the whole body, 
with dejection of the face and heaviness of the eyes, are the 



* ' In pain, the body is exerted to violent tension, and all the emotions 
and passions allied to pain, or having their origin and foundation in painful 
sensations, have this general distinction of character, that there is an ener- 
getic action or tremor, the effect of universal and great excitement. It must 
at the same time be remembered, that all the passions of this class, some 
more immediately, others more indirectly, produce in the second stage 
exhaustion, debility, and loss of tone, from over-exertion.'— Bell, Anatomy 
of Expression, p. 154. 



LANGUOR OF SORROW— ASTONISHMENT. 283 

most striking characteristics. The lips are relaxed, and the 
lower jaw drops ; the upper eyelid falls and half covers the 
pupil of the eye. The eye is frequently filled with tears, and 
the eyebrows take an inclination similar to that which the 
depressors of the angles of the lips give to the mouth/ — 
Anatomy of Expression, p. 151. 

21. There are states marked by the opposite of this cha- 
racter. Astonishment, for example, has a stimulating effect 
upon the organs of movement, and probably all that is peculiar 
in its expression may be attributed to this effect. The lungs 
are quickened, the mouth is opened and fixed to facilitate the 
breathing ; the nostrils may be slightly distended for the same 
reason. The wide stare of the eyes is a result of anything 
strongly arresting the gaze, partly reflex, partly voluntary, 
and, it may be, in some degree emotional. This expression 
may be studied to great advantage in infants ; in them we 
may see both the respiratory effects and the arrested gaze, the 
eyelids and eyebrows both being strongly elevated. The 
throwing out of the arms is a usual accompaniment of the 
state, and may be either secondary to the increased action of 
the chest, or that along with a primary effect of the emotion. 
Thei'e is a great tendency to throw the arms outward in 
making a vigorous respiration ; but this would probably not 
of itself account for the action to the full extent that we see 
it, and I therefore assume also that the emotional state ex- 
tends its influence to the extremities, as any emotional state is 
free to do. 

The following is an interesting sentence on Laura Bridge- 
man, the blind deaf-mute at Boston. ' When Laura is asto- 
nished or amazed, she rounds and protrudes her lips, opens 
them, breathes strongly, spreads her arms, and turns her hands 
with extended fingers upwards, just as we do when wondering 
at something very uncommon/ These being in her case as 
unprompted by imitation as the earliest movements of infancy, 
we may look upon them as the original or instinctive effects 
of the emotion. 

The case of respiratory action quickened to convulsion I 
shall speak of under the special instances where it occurs. 



284 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

22. It is necessary now to advert to the effects of emotion 
not muscular, or the influences upon the secretions, excretions, 
the circulation, &c. Hardly any portion of the system seems 
exempt from the diffusive action of an emotional excitement. 
All functions liable to be affected by influence at a distance 
conveyed through the nerves, as digestion, perspiration, the 
action of the heart and of the capillaries, and many other 
processes, are quickened or deranged by mental commotion. 

The Lachrymal Secretion claims attention in the first 
place. The Anatomy of the apparatus has been touched upon 
in speaking of its associated organ, the Eye. The effusion of 
tears from the gland over the eyeball is constantly going on 
during waking hours. Certain emotions, to be afterwards 
defined, specifically affect the effusion (just as pain and anger 
curve the under lip), and cause the liquid to be secreted and 
poured out in large quantities, so as to moisten the eye, and 
overflow upon the cheek. By this outpouring there is a 
relief afforded to the vessels of the brain, which are congested 
under the pressure of painful emotion. A strong sensibility 
lodges in the lachrymal organ, which will require to be 
minutely described at another time. For the present, we 
may remark of emotional diffusion in general, that every 
part excited into action, whether moving organ, secretion, or 
excretion, is itself the souixie of a distinct sensibility which 
mixes with and often greatly modifies the original emotion ; 
in pleasure enhancing, and in pain neutralizing it. 

Perhaps one of the most notable of the effects now under 
consideration is Blushing. This is an action on the vascular 
system, or the capillary blood-vessels of the face, neck, and 
breast. According to Sir C. Bell, it is too sudden to be traced 
to the heart's action, and we must therefore compare it to a 
cold sweat, or to some of the actions of the nervous system 
upon the capillary circulation. Blushing is an expression 
apparently dormant until the individual has become strongly 
susceptible to the human presence, and is one of the effects of 
any great excitement from this cause. 

The bursting out of a Cold Sweat is an action diffused 
from fear, and does not come alone. The same influence 



LAUGHTER. 2 85 

extends to the inward secretions, to the intestines, the kidneys, 
the liver, &c. The cold perspiration is a sudden discharge 
from the sudorific glands of the skin, like the outburst of tears 
from the lachrymal gland. The character of the insensible or 
gaseous perspiration is changed under strong excitement. 

The salivary and gastric secretions are extremely suscep- 
tible to emotional influence. But the same may be said of 
Digestion at every stage. This is only one of the many con- 
sequences of the intimate connexion between the brain and 
the alimentary canal, which makes the sensations from this 
last organ so massive and prominent. The depressing and 
perturbing passions impair all the functions of the stomach, 
destroying appetite, and relaxing the tone of the intestinal 
canal. A hilarious excitement, within limits, stimulates those 
functions, but joy may be so intense as to produce the per- 
turbing effect. 

The Secretion of Milk from the breast is notoriously liable 
to mental influences ; some favourable to a healthy flow, while 
depressing passions check and poison it. 

I am unable to give an exhaustive catalogue of this class 
of influences, or to define precisely those now cited. Know- 
ledge on this subject appears to be as yet imperfect. These, 
however, will serve as examples to show how essentially con- 
nected with Emotion is the fact of a free diffusion over every 
part that is reached by the nervous ramifications of the central 
brain. 

23. It now remains for us to advert to the two convulsive 
outbursts, Laughter and Tears. 

Laughter is properly an expression of joyous emotion. 
This remarkable perturbation of the system is brought on in 
many ways, and often by very slight causes. Mere hilarity, or 
animal spirits ; cold, and acute pains, when not so intense as 
to stimulate the expression projDer to pain ; tickling ; 
hysterical fits ; self-complacency, and a feeling of triumph at 
some striking effect produced by self or others, (the point 
insisted on by Hobbes in his theory of Laughter) ; kindly 
feeling ; the spectacle or notion of filthy, degraded, or for- 
bidden things ; the so-called ludicrous,- which is usually the 



286 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

clash of dignity with meanness ; — these, and perhaps other 
circumstances besides, rank among the causes of laughter. 
The medulla oblongata, which is the immediate organ in 
bringing on the outburst, is very prone to be irritated to a 
discharge of this special influence. We find that some tem- 
peraments are peculiarly liable to be excited to laughter ; the 
liability may be so great as to be a positive weakness, in- 
dicating a sort of dissolute incontinence of the nervous 
system. 

24. The action is of the respiratory class. ' Observe,' says 
Sir Charles Bell, 'the condition of a man convulsed with 
laughter, and consider what are the organs or system of 
parts affected. He draws a full breath, and throws it out in 
interrupted, short, and audible cachinnations ; the muscles of 
his throat, neck, and chest, are agitated ; the diaphragm is 
especially convulsed. He holds his sides, and, from the violent 
agitation, he is incapable of a voluntary act/ The expiratory 
muscles are strongly convulsed in laughter, those namely, of 
the chest and abdomen ; and by ■ convulsions' we mean those 
rapid and violent contractions which the will cannot resist, 
any more than in the spasms of nervous disease. A sudden 
discharge of nervous energy from the medulla oblongata is the 
immediate cause of the extraordinary excitement and accelera- 
tion of the respiratory system of movements. Passing next to 
the sympathies or accompaniments of the face, we find the 
relaxation of the mouth and of the corrugator of the eyes, 
should this last happen to be in action ; with this there may 
be an additional tension imparted to the antagonising muscles 
which open the features ; ' hence, by a lateral stretching of 
the mouth, and a raising of the cheek to the lower eyelid, a 
smile is produced. If the idea be exceedingly ridiculous, it is 
in vain that we endeavour to restrain this relaxation, and to 
compress the lips. The muscles concentring to the mouth 
prevail ; they become more and more influenced ; they retract 
the lips, and display the teeth. The cheeks are more power- 
fully drawn up, the eye-lids wrinkled, and the eye almost 
concealed/ — Bell, Anatomy of Expression, p. 147. 

The convulsion of the respiratory muscles in laughter is 



OUTBURST OF GRIEF. 287 

doubtless one distinct effect, namely, the discharge of an in- 
creased shock of nervous excitement from the centre that 
supports the ordinary movements. The action on the muscles 
of the face we may look upon as another effect, not growing 
out of the respiratory stimulus, but arising apart, although in 
concert with the first. The tension of the larynx, which 
renders laughter vocal, may likewise be a distinct impulse 
from the common centre of Emotion. Although all these in- 
fluences spring immediately from the medulla oblongata, and 
may there receive an impress of harmony, yet their remote 
and primary stimulus is in the seat of emotion, the cerebral 
hemispheres. 

The Respiratory Organs are convulsed in different ways 
according to the nature of the stimulus; at all events the 
effects are very different in such acts as coughing, sneezing, 
yawning, hiccup, &c. The difference of effect is most marked, 
in the midst of much that is common, in comparing Laughter 
with the manifestations of grief or pathetic emotion. 

25. The convulsive outburst of grief is described by Sh 
Charles Bell as follows : — 

' The lachrymal glands are the first to be affected ; then 
the eyelids ; and finally, the whole converging muscles of the 
cheeks. The lips are drawn aside, not from their circular 
fibres relaxing, as in laughter, but from their being forcibly 
retracted by the superior influence of their antagonist muscles. 
Instead of the joyous elevation of the cheeks, the muscle 
which pulls down the angle of the mouth, triangularis oris, 
is more under influence, and the angle is depressed. The 
cheeks are thus drawn between two adverse powers ; the 
muscles which surround the eyelids, and that which depresses 
the lower lip. 

' The same cause which drew the diaphragm and muscles 
of the chest into action in laughing, is perceived here. The 
diaphragm is spasmodically and irregularly affected ; the chest 
and throat are influenced ; the breathing is cut by sobbing ; 
the inspiration is hurried, and the expiration is slow, with a 
melancholy note. 

' In the violence of weeping, accompanied with lamentation, 



288 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

the face is flushed, or rather suffused with stagnant blood, and 
the veins of the forehead distended. In this we see the effect 
of the impeded action of the chest/ 

In laughter, the lachrymal effusion is last in the series 
of effects ; here it comes first. It would seem as if this organ 
were affected sooner than the chest, and had an influence in 
bringing on the respiratory convulsions. There is a cry of 
pain, often manifested by infants, without tears, and capable 
of being instantly arrested. This is a mere vocal disturbance, 
implying a sharp but not convulsive expiration, and a tension 
of the vocal ligaments. This is the cry of anger likewise, 
which is marked by being very sharp and violent. When the 
lachrymal organs are affected to profuse flooding, the larynx 
and chest are usually convulsed at the same time, and sobbing 
ensues. In this case the diaphragm, the chief muscle of inspira- 
tion, is affected with convulsions, and the glottis being usually 
closed, no air really enters, so that the action of the lungs is 
impeded all the while. Here lies the great contrast between 
the two opposite emotions; in laughter, the expiration is 
excited to convulsion; in sobbing, the inspiration is convulsed, 
and the expirations are forced on as a consequence. The 
hysterical sensation at the throat is produced by the stimulus 
that convulses the larynx closing the glottis, and affecting 
the vocal cords. 

The muscles of expression of the face brought into play 
in this emotion are those already cited as characteristic of 
painful states. The depressor of the angle of the mouth is a 
specific muscle of pain, as the zygomatic and elevators of the 
angle of the mouth are of pleasure. 

The coincidence of a certain muscular expression with a 
specific secretion, as the contortion of pain with the flow of 
tears, is to be ranked among the pre-established harmonies of 
the system operated through the central organs of the brain. 
In other emotions, the feelings of sex, for example, there are 
similar coincidences. 



289 



« 



OF THE INSTINCTIVE GERM OF VOLITION. 

26. In a former chapter I endeavoured to establish, as an 
important fact of the human system, that our various organs are 
liable to be moved by a stimulus flowing out from the nervous 
centres, in the absence of any impressions from without, or 
any antecedent state of feeling whatsoever. This fact of spon- 
taneous activity, I look upon as an essential prelude to volun- 
tary power, making indeed one of the terms or elements of 
Volition ; in other words, Volition is a compound, made up 
of this and something else. 

Neither the existence of spontaneous actions, nor the 
essential connexion of these with voluntary actions, has been, 
so far as I am aware, advanced as a doctrine by any writer on 
the human mind ; but the following interesting extracts from 
Professor Miiller will show that he has been forcibly impressed 
with both the one and the other of these views. 

' It is evident that the ultimate source of voluntary 
motion cannot depend on any conscious conception of its 
object; for voluntary* motions are performed by the foetus 
before any object can occur to the mind, before an idea can 
be possibly conceived of what the voluntary motion effects; 
we must therefore view the question in a much simpler 
manner. On what do the first voluntary movements in the 
foetus depend? All the complex conditions which give rise to 
voluntary motions, in the adult, are here absent. Its own 
body is the sole world from which the obscure conceptions of 
the foetus that excite its actions can be derived. The foetus 
moves its limbs at first, not for the attainment of any object, 
but solely because it can move them. Since, however, on 
this supposition, there can be no particular reason for the 
movement of any one part, and the foetus would have equal 
cause to move all its muscles at the same time, there must be 
something which determines this or that voluntary motion to 



* I should say ' spontaneous.' 
U 



290 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

be performed, — which incites the retraction, first of this foot 
or arm, and then of the other/ — MuLLER, p. 935. 

This last supposition, as to the equal tendency of all the 
muscles to come into action through the spontaneous activity 
of the centres, is, I think, too absolutely stated. There can 
hardly exist such a perfectly balanced charge of the centres, 
as to make all of them equally ready to commence a stimulus 
of the muscles under their control.* It will always happen 
that some one will be more prone to act than another, from 
the mere state of constitutional or nutritive vigour belonging 
to it: and when that one has exhausted itself the discharge 
of some other may be expected. Then, as to the tendency to 
move first one foot and then the other, we have already seen 
that this alternation is provided for by a distinct arrangement 
referable, in all probability, to the cerebellum ; so that when 
by any means a motion of the legs is commenced, that motion 
is guided in an alternating cycle. I continue the quotation 
from Miiller. 

' The knowledge of the changes of position, which are 
produced by given movements, is gained gradually, and only 
by means of the movements themselves; the first play of the 
will on single groups of the radicle motor fibres of the nerves 
in the medulla oblongata, must therefore be independent of 
any aim towards change of position ; it is a mere play of voli- 
tion, without any conception of the effects thereby produced 
in the limbs This voluntary [say rather spontaneous] excita- 
tion of the origins of the nervous fibres, without objects in 
view, gives rise to motions, changes of posture, and consequent 
sensations. Thus a connexion is established in the yet void 
mind between certain sensations and certain motions. 
When subsequently a sensation is excited from without, in 
any one part of the body, the mind will be already aware 
that the voluntary motion, which is in consequence executed, 
will manifest itself in the limb which was the seat of sensa- 
tion ; the foetus in utero will move the limb that is pressed 
upon, and not all the limbs simultaneously. The voluntary 



* Like the ass of Buridan between two bundles of hay. 



» 



SPONTANEITY OF THE NERVOUS DISCHARGE. 291 

movements of animals must be developed in the same manner. 
The bird which begins to sing, is necessitated by an instinct 
to incite the nerves of its laryngeal muscles to action; tones 
are thus produced. By the repetition of this blind exertion 
of volition, the bird at length learns to connect the kind of 
cause with the character of the effect produced. 

' We have already learned from many other facts, that the 
nervous principle in the medulla oblongata is in a state of 
extraordinary tension, or proneness to action ; that the slightest 
change in its condition excites a discharge of nervous in- 
fluence, as manifested in laughing, sneezing, sobbing, &c. 
While the tension of the nervous principle is not disturbed, 
we are equally ready to excite voluntary movements in any 
part of the body, and such is the state of rest or inaction. 
Every mental impulse to motion disturbs the balance of this 
tension, and causes a discharge of nervous influence in a 
determinate direction, — that is, excites to action a certain 
number of the fibres of the nervous motor apparatus/ — 
p. 936-7. 

This last view I conceive to be an accurate statement of the 
nature of nervous energy. The nervous system may be com- 
pared to an organ with bellows constantly charged, and ready 
to be let off in any direction, according to the particular keys 
that are touched. The stimulus of our sensations and feelings, 
instead of supplying the inward power, merely determines 
the manner and place of the discharge. The centres of speech 
and song, for example, when fresh and healthy, may either 
overflow so as to commence action in a purely spontaneous 
way, or they remain undischarged till irritated by some 
external influence, as, for example, the sound of another 
voice. The bird whose morning song has lain dormant for a 
time, flows out at the stimulus of another songster just begun. 

27. We must now therefore specifically consider what 
there is in volition over and beyond the spontaneous dis- 
charge of active impulses upon our various moving organs, — 
limbs, body, voice, tongue, eyes, &c. If we look at this kind 
of impulse closely, we shall see wherein its defect or insuffi- 
ciency lies, namely, in the random nature of it. Being 

tj2 



292 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

dependent on the condition of the various nervous centres, 
the discharge is regulated by physical circumstances, and not 
by the ends, purposes, or uses of the animal. When the 
centres of locomotion are fresh and exuberant, as in the dog 
unchained of a morning, the animal sets off at the top of his 
speed ; the force once exhausted, the creature comes to a 
stand-still in the same spontaneous way, like a watch run 
down. But this moment of exhausted energy is the very 
moment when an animal ought properly to be active in pro- 
curing food and replenishment to the system ; and there ought 
to be in the state of exhaustion itself a stimulus to act, just as 
a watch run down would require, in order to be self-sustaining, 
to touch some chord that would set a-going a power to wind 
it up, or as a dying fire ought to act on a spring for putting 
on fresh coals. Mere spontaneity, therefore, stops far short of 
what our volition does for us in the way of self-preservation ; 
a power that dies out when action is most needed cannot be 
the appropriate support of our existence. 

M tiller's application of the term 'voluntary' to the initial 
movements prompted solely by the state of tension of the 
nerve centres is not strictly correct ; these movements are 
but one term of the couple that makes up an act of volition ; 
both a feeling and a movement are necessary parts of every 
such act. A morsel of food on the tongue sets a-going the 
movements of mastication ; this is a voluntary effort, an effort 
prompted and controlled by a feeling, namely, the sensation 
of taste or relish. Acts performed without any stimulus of 
feeling are usually described as involuntary ; such are the 
spasms of disease and the reflex movements already noticed. 

There is a power in certain feelings or emotions to originate 
movements of the various active organs. A connexion is 
formed either by instinct or by acquisition, or by both together, 
between our emotional states and our active states, sufficient 
to constitute a link of cause and effect between the one and 
the other. And the question arises whether this link is 
original or acquired. 

Dr. Reid has no hesitation in classing the voluntary com- 
mand of our organs, that is, the sequence of feeling and action 



VOLITION INVOLVES SOMETHING ACQUIEED. 293 

implied in all acts of will among instincts. (See his chapter 
on Instincts, Essays on the Active Potuers.) The power of 
lifting a morsel of food to the mouth is, according to him, an 
instinctive or pre-established conjunction of the wish and the 
deed; that is to say, the emotional state of hunger coupled 
with the sight of a piece of bread, is associated through a 
primitive link of the mental constitution with the several 
movements of the hand, arm, and mouth, concerned in the act 
of eating. 

This assertion of Dr. Reid's may be simply met by appeal- 
ing to the facts. It is not true that human beings possess at 
birth any voluntary command of their limbs whatsoever. A 
babe of two months old cannot use its hands in obedience to 
its desires. The infant can grasp nothing, hold nothing, can 
scarcely fix its eyes on anything. Dr. Reid might just as 
easily assert that the movements of a baJ let- dancer are in- 
stinctive, or that we are born with an already established link 
of causation in our minds between the wish to paint a land- 
scape and the movements of a painter's arm. If the more 
perfect command of our voluntary movements implied in 
every art be an acquisition, so is the less perfect command of 
these movements that grows upon a child during the first 
year of life. At the moment of birth, voluntary action is all 
but a nonentity. 

28. According to this view, therefore, there is a process of 
acquirement in the establishing of those links of feeling and 
action that volition implies : this process will be traced and 
exemplified in the following Book, and also, at some future 
time, in a detailed discussion of the whole subject of volition. 
But the acquisition must needs repose upon some fundamental 
property of our nature that may properly be styled an Instinct. 
It is this initial germ or rudiment that I am now anxious to 
fasten upon and make apparent. There certainly does exist 
in the depths of our constitution a property, whereby certain 
of our feelings, especially the painful class, impel to action of 
some hind or other. This, which I have termed the volitional 
property of feeling, is not an acquired property. From the 
earliest infancy a pain has a tendency to excite the active 



29 4t OF THE INSTINCTS. 

organs, as well as the emotional expression, although as yet 
there is no channel prepared whereby the stimulus may flow 
towards the appropriate members. The child whose foot is 
pricked by a needle in its dress is undoubtedly impelled by 
an active stimulus, but as no primitive link exists between an 
irritation in the foot and the movement of the hand towards 
the part affected, the stimulus is wasted on vain efforts, and 
there is nothing to be done but to drown the pain by the out- 
burst of pure emotion. It is the property of almost every 
feeling of pain to stimulate some action for the extinction or 
abatement of that pain ; it is likewise the property of many 
emotions of pleasure to stimulate an action for the continuance 
and increase of the pleasure ; but the primitive impulse does 
not in either case determine which action. We are left to a 
laborious and tedious process of acquisition in so far as the 
singling out of the requisite movement is concerned. 

If there exist at the commencement only a vague indeter- 
minate impulse attaching to our painful or pleasurable states, 
how can we ever get these vague impulses to run into the true 
channels, or to be associated with the appropriate movements? 
We seem as yet no nearer the solution of the grand difficulty. 

29. I will endeavour to indicate what seems to me to be 
the circumstance that leads to this remarkable union between 
the two great isolated facts of our nature, namely, on the one 
hand, feelings inciting to movement in general, but to no 
action in particular, and, on the other hand, the spontaneous 
movements already spoken of. 

If, at the moment of some acute pain, there should acci- 
dentally occur a spontaneous movement, and if that movement 
sensibly alleviates the pain, then it is that the volitional 
impulse belonging to the feeling will show itself. The move- 
ment accidentally begun through some other influence, will be 
sustained through this influence of the painful emotion. In 
the original situation of things, the acute feeling is unable of 
itself to bring on the precise movement that would modify the 
suffering; there is no primordial link between a state of 
suffering and a train of alleviating movements. But should 
the proper movement be once actually begun, and cause a felt 



FOUNDATION PROPERTY OF VOLITION. 295 

diminution of the acute agony, the spur that belongs to states 
of pain would suffice to sustain this movement. Once assume 
that the two waves occur together in the same cerebral seat — 
a wave of painful emotion, and a wave of spontaneous action 
tending to subdue the pain, — there would arise an influence 
out of the former to sustain and prolong the activity of the 
latter. The emotion cannot invite, or suggest, or waken up 
the appropriate action ; nevertheless, the appropriate action 
once there and sensibly telling upon the irritation, is thereupon 
kept going by the active influence, the volitional spur of the 
irritated consciousness. In short, if the state of pain cannot 
awaken a dormant action, a present feeling can at least main- 
tain a present action. This, so far as I can make out, is the 
original position of things in the matter of volition. It may 
be that the start and the movements resulting from an acute 
smart, may relieve the smart, but that would not be a volition. 
In volition there are actions quite distinct from the manifested 
movements due to the emotion itself ; these other actions rise 
at first independently and spontaneously, and are clutched in 
the embrace of the feeling when the two are found to suit one 
another in the alleviation of pain or the effusion of pleasure. 

An example will perhaps place this speculation in a clearer 
light. An infant lying in bed has the painful sensation of 
chillness. This feeling produces the usual emotional display, 
namely, movements, and perhaps cries and tears. Besides 
these emotional elements there is a latent spur of volition, but 
with nothing to lay hold of as yet owing to the disconnected 
, condition of the mental arrangements at our birth. The 

child's spontaneity, however, may be awake, and the pained 
condition will act so as to irritate the spontaneous centres, and 
make their central stimulus flow more copiously. In the 
course of a variety of spontaneous movements of arms, legs, and 
body, there occurs an action that brings the child in contact 
with the nurse lying beside it ; instantly warmth is felt, and 
this alleviation of the painful feeling becomes immediately the 
stimulus to sustain the movement going on at that moment. 
That movement, when discovered, is kept up in preference to 
the others occurring in the course of the random spontaneity. 



296 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

Possibly some little time may be requisite in the human 
infant to develop this power of clutching the right movement 
when it comes. But the power must be an original endow- 
ment ; no experience could confer such a faculty as this. We 
are driven to assume some fundamental mode of connexion 
between the detached elements of feeling and movement 
occurring in the same brain at the same moment ; and I know 
of no better way of expressing this primordial tendency of the 
one to embrace the other than by saying that, when both are 
present together, the volitional spur of the feeling can stimulate 
the continuance of the movement, provided a soothing and 
pleasurable effect is the conscious result. 

By a process of cohesion or acquisition, which I shall after- 
wards dwell upon, the movement and the feeling become so 
linked together, that the feeling can at after times waken the 
movement out of dormancy ; this is the state of matters in the 
maturity of volition. The infant of twelve months, under the 
stimulus of cold, can hitch nearer the side of the nurse, 
although no spontaneous movements to that effect happen at 
the moment ; past repetition has established a connexion 
that did not exist at the beginning, whereby the feeling and 
action have become linked together as cause and effect. A 
full-grown volition is now manifested, instead of that vague 
incitement that could do nothing until the right movement 
had sprung up in the course of a series of spontaneous dis- 
charges of the central sources of power. 

30. We must then assume it as a fact that as soon as a 
clear consciousness of movements sensibly remedial comes 
into play, that consciousness has the power of stimulating a 
concurring activity ; in other words volition begins. It may 
be by a reflex action that a child commences to suck when the 
nipple is placed between its lips ; but the continuing to suck 
so long as the sensation of hunger is felt, and the ceasing when 
that sensation ceases, are truly volitional acts. All through 
animal life, down to the very lowest sentient being, this 
property of consciousness is exhibited, and operates as the 
instrument for guiding and supporting existence. To what- 
ever lengths the purely reflex instincts, or the movements 



«D 



VOLITION CO-EXTENSIVE WITH ANIMAL LIFE. 297 

divorced from consciousness, may be carried on in the inferior 
tribes, I can with difficulty admit the total absence of feeling 
in any being that we are accustomed to call an animal ; and 
with feeling I am obliged also to include this property which 
links the state of feeling with the state of present movement. 
Inferiority in the animal scale is marked by the fewness of 
the sensations, not by an entire blank in this region ; and it 
does not follow that because a living creature has no conscious- 
ness saving hunger, repletion, and the feeling of being hurt, 
that these feelings should be feeble and insufficient to stimu- 
late and guide the animal's movements. The earthworm 
leaves the earth when soaked with rain, in obedience to 
a stimulus of uneasiness, and continues crawling until its con- 
sciousness is again serene. When the ground has dried to the 
proper degree, the animal makes its way back to its shelter 
and food. If perchance in the movements stimulated by an 
uneasy state, the uneasiness comes to be sensibly increased, 
the worm would feel itself arrested ; the spur would be 
towards putting a stop to the movement causing pain, and 
some other movement would go on instead ; if relief came by 
the change, the volitional spur would sustain the new action 
so long as the agreeable effect continued. Here too, I should 
be disposed to assume the existence of a separate spontaneous 
tendency to crawl in the new-born worm, a tendency growing 
out of its nervous and muscular organization. An animal 
moves and also feels ; these are distinct facts, separate 
properties of the mental system ; nevertheless, when both 
take place together, the feeling can, according to the nature 
of it, stimulate or repress the movement ; and this I believe 
to be volition in the germ. 

31. To reduce the complicacy of this speculation, I shall 
repeat in numerical sejDarateness the distinct considerations 
that are mixed up in it. 

(1.) There is a power of spontaneous movement in the 
various active organs anterior to, and independent of, the 
feelings that such movement may give birth to ; and without 
this no action for an end can ever be commenced. 

(2.) There exists consciousness, feeling, sensation or emotion, 



298 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

produced from movements, from stimulants of the senses and 
sensitive parts, or from other causes. The physical accom- 
paniment of this is a diffused excitement of the bodily organs 
constituting the outburst or expression of it, as the start from 
a blow. 

(3.) There is a property of consciousness, — superadded to 
and by no means involved in, this diffused energy of expres- 
sion, — whereby a feeling can influence any present active 
exertion of the body so as either to continue or abate that 
exertion. This is the property that links feeling to movement, 
thereby giving birth to volition. The feelings that possess 
this power — including nearly all pains and many states of 
pleasure, — I have hitherto described as volitional feelings ; 
those that are deficient in this stimulus, being principally of the 
pleasurable class, are the pure, un-volitional, or serene emotions- 

32. There are various actions, commonly called Instincts, 
that are only phases or results of this fundamental property 
of mind. Self-preservation, implying the revulsion from pain 
and injury, and the appropriation of the means of subsistence, 
is an example of volition as now explained. We have no 
original tendency to protect ourselves from injurious influences 
if they do not affect us as pains, nor to lay hold of beneficial 
influences that give no present pleasure. Excepting under 
the sweep of volition, self-preservation does not exist. 

There are certain special instances of early precaution 
against harm that are often remarked upon as a portion of the 
original provision of nature in our behalf. Thus the dread of 
falling is very strong in early life, and stimulates powerful 
efforts by way of prevention. But this is no other than an 
instance of the general fact we are now considering. The 
remembrance of the acute pain of a past fall is one source of 
the spur to preserve the stability of one's footing. And even 
still earlier, and before experienced hurts can operate as a 
warning, there is a severe and distressing sensation in the 
sudden loss of support, that prompts us vigorously to act for 
restoring the firm position. The case is distinguished only by 
the remarkable virulence of the pained condition and the 
corresponding degree of volitional stimulus manifested by it. 



299 



OF THE SPECIAL ACTIVITIES AND INSTINCTS. 

Under this head would fall to be considered Locomotion, 
the Voice, Mastication, and the Constructive and Destructive 
apparatus, &c. Locomotion is an interesting subject in itself, 
but for the purposes of the present treatise I do not consider 
the full exposition of it at all necessary. The notice already 
taken of the subject in the earlier part of this chapter must 
suffice. 

33. So deeply does the act of Speech enter into the opera- 
tions of Mind — Emotion, Action, and Intelligence —that the 
mechanism of the organ deserves a full description in this 
place. 

Of the Voice. 

I shall first make a few quotations from the Anatomy of 
the Voice. 

' The upper part of the air passage (from the lungs) is 
modified in its structure to form the organ of voice. This 
organ, named the larynx, is placed at the upper and fore part 
of the neck, where it forms a considerable prominence in the 
middle line. It lies between the large vessels of the neck, 
and below the tongue and hyoid bone, to which bone it is 
suspended.' 

' The larynx is cylindrical at the lower part, where it joins 
the trachea (or windpipe), but it widens above, becomes 
flattened behind and at the sides, and presents a blunted 
vertical ridge in front. 

1 The larynx consists of a framework of cartilages, articu- 
lated together and connected by proper ligaments, two of 
which, named the true vocal cords, are immediately concerned 
in the production of the voice. It also possesses muscles, 
which move the cartilages one upon another, a mucous mem- 
brane lining its internal surface, numerous mucous glands, and 
lastly, blood-vessels, lymphatics, and nerves, besides cellular 
tissue and fat.' 

Cartilages of the Larynx. — ' The cartilages of the larynx 



300 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

consist of three single and symmetrical pieces, named respec- 
tively the thyroid cartilage, the cricoid cartilage, and the 
cartilage of the epiglottis, and of six others, which occur in 
pairs, namely, the two arytenoid cartilages, the cornicula 
laryngis, and the cuneiform cartilages. Of these, only the 
thyroid and cricoid cartilages are seen on the front and sides 
of the larynx (see fig. p. 302) ; the arytenoid cartilages, sur- 
mounted by the cornicula of the larynx, together with the 
back of the cricoid cartilage, on which they rest, form the 
posterior wall of the larynx, whilst the epiglottis is situated in 
front/ — Qtjain, p. 1159. 

Confining ourselves as much as possible to the parts imme- 
diately connected with voice, I require to call attention prin- 
cipally to the thyroid and cricoid cartilages, the two arytenoid 
cartilages, the true vocal cords, and the muscles that move 
the cartilages and thereby affect the tension and position of 
the vocal cords. 

' The thyroid (shield-shaped) cartilage (see fig. 10) is the 
largest of the pieces composing the larynx. It is formed by 
two flat lamellae, united in front at an acute angle along the 
middle line, where they form a vertical projection which 
becomes gradually effaced as it is traced from above down- 
wards. The two lamella?, diverging one from the other back- 
wards, embrace the cricoid cartilage, and terminate posteriorly 
by two thick projecting vertical borders, separated widely from 
each other ; hence the thyroid cartilage is altogether wanting 
behind. The angular projection on the anterior surface in 
the median line is subcutaneous, and is much more prominent 
in the male than in the female, being named in the former the 
pomum Adami! 

'The cricoid cartilage, so named from its being shaped 
like a ring, is thicker in substance and stronger than the 
thyroid cartilage ; it forms the inferior, and a considerable 
portion of the back part of the larynx, and is the only one of 
the cartilages which completely surrounds this organ. It is 
deeper behind, where the thyroid cartilage is deficient, mea- 
suring in the male about an inch from above downwards, but 
is much narrower in front, where its vertical measurement is 



OEGAN OF VOICE. SOI 

only two lines and a half. The cricoid cartilage is circular 
belotv, but higher up it is somewhat compressed laterally, so 
that the passage through it is elliptical, its antero-posterior 
diameter being longer than the transverse/ 

' The arytenoid (ewer-shaped) cartilages (fig. t i) are two 
in number, are perfectly symmetrical in form. They may be 
compared to two three-sided pyramids recurved at the summit, 
measuring from five to six lines (half an inch) in height, resting 
by their bases on the posterior and highest part of the cricoid 
cartilage, and approaching near to one another towards the 
median line. Each measures upwards of three lines in width, 
and more than a line from before backwards.' — p. 1162. 

The cartilages are bound together by ligaments, of which 
I omit the description. The appearance of the interior of the 
larynx is given as follows (see fig. 11): 

1 On looking down through the superior opening of the 
larynx (where it communicates with the pharynx above and is 
bounded by the epiglottis, &c), the air passage below this 
part is seen to become gradually contracted, especially in its 
transverse diameter, so as to assume the form of a long narrow 
fissure running from before backwards. This narrow part of 
the larynx is called the glottis. Below it, at the upper border 
of the cricoid cartilage, the interior of the larynx assumes an 
elliptical form, and lower down still it becomes circular. The 
glottis is bounded laterally by four strongly marked folds of 
the mucous membrane, stretched from before backwards, two 
on each side, and named the vocal cords. The superior vocal 
cords are much thinner and weaker than the inferior, and are 
arched or semi-lunar in form ; the inferior or true vocal 
cords are thick, strong, and straight. Between the right and 
left inferior vocal cord is the narrow opening of the glottis, 
named the ri/ma glottidis, and sometimes the glottis vera, or 
true glottis.' — p. 1167. 

The inferior or true vocal cords, by whose vibration the 
voice is produced, are two bands of elastic substance, attached 
in front to about the middle of the depression between the 
wings of the thyroid cartilage, and behind to the arytenoid 
cartilages ; from this connexion they are called thyro-arytenoid 



302 



OF THE INSTINCTS. 



Fig. io.* 



ligaments. They consist of closely arranged parallel fibres, of 
that peculiar tissue occurring in some other parts of the body, 
named the yellow elastic tissue, being probably the most 
perfectly elastic substance of a ligamentous kind that nature 
has produced. India-rubber is employed, as an extremely 
inferior imitation, in making artificial instruments resembling 
the larynx. The upper and free edges of the cords, which 
are sharp and straight, are the parts thrown into vibration 
during the production of the voice. 

34 With reference to the muscles of the larynx I may 
state beforehand that the principal movements to be effected 
by them relate to the change of tightness and change of dis- 
tance of the two cords, for which purposes opposing pairs are 
necessary. By one action the cords are tightened, by another 

relaxed ; by a separate action they 
are approximated, and by the an- 
tagonist of this they are parted 
asunder. 

The great muscle of tension 
of the cords, the foremost and most 
powerful of all the muscles of the 
voice, is the crico-thyroid exhi- 
bited in the figure. ' It is a short, 
thick triangular muscle, seen on 
the front of the larynx, situated 
on the fore part and side of the 
cricoid cartilage. It arises by a 
broad origin from the cricoid car- 
tilage, reaching from the median 
line backwards upon the lateral 
surface, and its fibres, passing 
obliquely upwards and outwards, 
and diverging slightly, are in- 
serted into the lower border of the thyroid cartilage/ The 




* ' Side view of the thyroid and cricoid cartilages, with part of the 
trachea ; after Willis. — 8. Thyroid cartilage. 9. 9. Cricoid cartilage. 
10. Crico-thyroid muscle 11. Crico-tlryroid membrane, or ligament. 
12. Upper rings of the trachea.' — (Quain, p. 1171.) 



THE LARYNX AS AN INSTRUMENT OF SOUND. 



303 



Fig. 11.* 




contraction of the two crico-thyroid muscles causes the thyroid 
and cricoid cartilages to turn on each other behind ; thus if 
we suppose the cricoid cartilage 
to remain fixed, the upper part 
of the thyroid is carried forward 
or away from the other, drawing 
with it the ends of the vocal 
cords, which are attached behind 
to the cricoid cartilages through 
the arytenoid (see fig. u). In 
this way the vocal cords are 
stretched in proportion as the 
muscle contracts itself. The coun- 
teracting or antagonistic muscles 
are exhibited in the fig. (No. 7) 

passing between each arytenoid cartilage and the thyroid near 
the extremity of the vocal cords. 

In governing the aperture of the glottis, we find a muscle 
passing between the two arytenoid cartilages (6), and there- 
fore by its contraction drawing them together, and thus 
approximating the cords. The cords are separated and the 
glottis widened by a pair of muscles exhibited in the figure 
(4, 4) passing between the arytenoid and cricoid cartilages 
behind. No. 5 in the figure is another muscle connecting the 
same two cartilages laterally, and operating to contract the 
glottis. 

35. The Larynx, considered as oin instrument for the 
production of sound. — It has long been a question what 
kind of instrument the larynx should be compared to, in order 
to illustrate the manner of its action in giving out sound. 
From the existence of two vibrating strings or cords, the first 



* ' A diagram, slightly altered from Willis, showing a bird's-eye view 
of the interior of the larynx. — 1. Opening of the glottis. 2. 2. Arytenoid 
cartilages. 3. 3. Vocal cords. 4. 4 Posterior crico-arytenoid muscles. 

5. Eight lateral crico-arytenoid muscle; that of the left side is removed. 

6. Arytenoid muscle. 7. Thyro-aiytenoid muscle of the left side; that of 
the right side is removed. 8. Upper border of the thyroid cartilage. 
9. 9. Upper border and back of the cricoid cartilage. 13. Posterior crico- 
arytenoid ligament.' — (Quain, p. 1172.) 



304 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

and obvious supposition was to rank it with stringed instru- 
ments, such as the violin, where the same string produces a 
higher or lower note according to the degree of tightness 
given to it. But that two strings, about an inch long, should 
so vary in tension as to give out a range of notes, extending 
to more than two octaves, is altogether unparalleled in the 
experience of stringed instruments. A more accurate compa- 
rison appears to hold with reed instruments, such as the pipe 
of an organ, where the sound is produced by a vibrating reed. 
Professor Muller imitated the human voice by stretching two 
elastic membranes across the mouth of a short tube, each 
covering a portion of the opening, and having a chink left 
between them. By prolonging the membranes downward 
into the tube, so that not merely their edges, but their whole 
planes, might be thrown into vibration, Mr. Willis carried 
the imitation of the Human Glottis still farther. By experi- 
menting on an artificial glottis thus formed, it appeared that 
various notes could be obtained by altering the tightness of 
the tongues: the more tense they are, the higher is the note 
produced. ' It is true that a scale of notes, equal in extent 
to that of the human voice, cannot be obtained from edges 
of leather ; but this scale is much greater in india-rubber than 
in leather; and the elasticity of them both is so much inferior 
to that of the vocal ligaments, that we may readily infer that 
the greater scale of the latter is due to its greater elastic 
powers/ It is also found that in membranous tongues the 
increased strength of the blast can somewhat raise the pitch, 
the tension remaining the same. 

I quote a summary of the action of the Voice from 
Muller : — 

' The following will be the mode of production of the 
notes of the natural voice: — The vocal ligaments vibrate in 
their entire breadth, and with them the surrounding mem- 
branes and the thyro-arytenoid muscles. For the deepest 
notes, the vocal ligaments are much relaxed by the approxi- 
mation of the thyroid to the arytenoid cartilages. The lips 
of the glottis are, in this state of the larynx, not only quite 
devoid of tension; they are, when at rest, even wrinkled and 



PEODUCTION OF NOTES. 305 

plicated; but they become stretched by the current of air, 
and thus acquire the degree of tension necessary for vibration. 
The medium state, in which the cords are neither relaxed and 
wrinkled, nor stretched, is the condition for the middle notes 
of the natural register, those which are most easily produced. 
(The ordinary tones of the voice, in speaking, are intermediate 
between these and the deep bass notes.) The higher notes 
are produced, and the corresponding falsetto tones avoided, 
by the lateral compression of the vocal cords, and by the nar- 
rowing of the space beneath them, and further by increasing 
the force of the current of air. The muscular tension given to 
the lips of the glottis by the muscles above-mentioned must 
also be taken into account as contributing to the production 
of the notes of the natural register. 

( The falsetto notes are produced by the vibration of the 
inner portion or border of the vocal ligaments; their variation 
as to height or sharpness being effected by a variation of 
tension of the ligaments/ — p. 1015-6. 

It is a question not perfectly decided, how the cords are 
adjusted for the production of voice, in other words, what is 
the difference between their situation when the breath is 
passing through without causing vocal sound, and when sound 
is actually produced. Mr. Willis is led by his experiments to 
believe, that ' in the ordinary position of the glottis, during 
respiration without vocalization, the lips of the glottis are 
inclined from each other, and that to produce voice they must 
assume the parallel state. He attributes to the thyroaryte- 
noid muscles the office of placing the arytenoid cartilages and 
the lips of the glottis in the vocalizing position/ — (Mullek, 
p. 1016, note.) 

The fact, apparently well ascertained, that by simply in- 
creasing the force of the blast a higher note is produced, con- 
stitutes one of the difficulties of a person learning to sing. 
The attempt to increase the loudness or strength of a note is 
sure to raise the pitch, until such time as the voice has been 
taught to relax the cords at the same moment. It is only a 
very accomplished singer that can swell a note, or make it fade 
away, without in any degree raising or sinking the pitch. 

x 



306 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

Another change that may occur in the vocal cords to alter 
the pitch, is the shortening of the slit between them, by 
causing their sides to come together. When this happens the 
note is raised, while the tension remains the same. This 
change has been brought forward as one explanation of the 
falsetto voice. 

' The width of the aperture of the glottis, has no essential 
influence on the pitch of the notes, except inasmuch as it is 
difficult to elicit sounds from the larynx, by blowing through 
the trachea, when the aperture of the glottis is wide; the 
sound is then not only devoid of musical tone, but the note 
can be raised by increased force of the blast a trifling degree 
only above the fundamental note; while, when the aperture 
of the glottis is narrow, it may be raised by this means a suc- 
cession of semitones up to the 'fifth/ or beyond it.' — MuLLER, 
p. 1028. Thus the narrowing of the glottis is not an act for 
regulating pitch, like the tension of the cords, but a condition 
of the production of musical tones, and of the action of the 
chest in altering the pitch. 

Other circumstances concurring in the adjustment of the 
larynx to high and low notes, are still but imperfectly 
explained. ' Thus, during the ascent of the voice from the 
deeper to the higher notes of the scale, we find the whole 
larynx undergoing an elevation towards the base of the 
cranium :' this change, however, is not considered so essential 
to the pitch, as to the quality of the note when the pitch 
is high. 

The difference between the male and female voice lies in 
the size of the larynx and length of the vocal cords; both 
which are greatest in the male. Within the same sex there 
are gradations in these particulars. 

36. The musical voice is entirely dependent on the 
larynx, with its vocal cords and muscles, coupled with .the 
resonance of the adjoining parts, namely, the nostrils, sinuses, 
and the cranium at large. The articulate voice involves 
the action of the mouth in addition. Articulate sounds 
are those simple distinguishable sounds that can be united or 
fused into the compounds called syllables and words. Of 



ARTICULATE SOUNDS. 807 

their two divisions, Vowels and Consonants, the vowels are 
produced by an open and immoveable position of the mouth; 
while the consonants require a shutting more or less complete, 
and also a movement of the parts. Compare the sound of 
' awe' with the sound of ' cup' : the one a vowel, the other con- 
taining two consonants. 

The following experiment illustrates the nature of vowel 
formation : — 

' Open the mouth to its greatest possible extent — with the 
lips naturally drawn back, so that the edges of the teeth are 
visible — and emit an utterance of voice; it will sound ah ! 
Continue sounding this vowel while you cover the mouth 
firmly with the hand, laying the fingers of the left hand on 
the right cheek, and slowly bringing the whole hand across 
the mouth ; the vowel quality of the sound will be changed 
with every diminution of the vocal aperture, progressively 
becoming uh, aw, oh, oo, as the hand gradually covers the 
mouth/* 

The changes of the mouth for different vowels are chiefly 
two, expressed by the terms buccal and oral, the one referring 
to the size of the cavity of the mouth, the other to the 
opening the lips. The modifications of these, coupled with the 
jjosition of the tongue, give rise to all the varieties of vowel 
sound. An estimate has been made of the comparative 
dimensions of the two openings in the principal vowels. 
Admitting five degrees of size, both of the opening of the 
mouth and of the space between the tongue and palate, 
Dr. Carpenter, slightly altering from Kempelen, states the 
dimensions of these parts for the different vowels as fol- 
lows : — 

Size of oral opening. Size of buccal cavity. 
5 5 

4 2 

3 1 

2 4 

1 5 

Of the consonants a great many divisions have been 



owel. 


Sound. 


a 


as in ah 


a 


as in name 


e 


as in theme 





as in cold 


00 


as in cool 



* Bell's Elocutionary Manual, p. 21. 
x2* 



30S OF THE INSTINCTS. 

made. A certain play of the tongue, teeth, or lips is necessary 
in all of them. This play may vary from the mere quiver of 
the tongue in sounding s, to the forcible shutting off of the 
sound by the sudden closure of the lips in p final. The 
sounds p, t, and k, are connected either with sudden closures 
or explosive openings of the vocal current, and are called 
mutes and also explosive letters. Of these three, p being 
formed by the lips, is called a labial ; t being formed by the 
contact of the tongue with the palate, is a palatal and also a 
dental; and k is a guttural or throat-formed letter, the 
contact of the tongue being much farther back in the palate. 
As all the consonants are formed more or less nearly in one or 
other of these three positions, a general division of them can 
be made into labials, palatals, and gutturals. Six distinct 
Labials are enumerated, depending on different ways of 
sounding with the lip closure. The mute or explosive p has 
been mentioned ; next to it is b, produced by a less violent 
closure, which allows the voice to be heard during the act, as 
any one will feel by sounding cup and cub. The third labial 
is m, which is still farther removed from the sudden extinction 
occurring with p ; a free communication is opened with the 
nose for the egress of the air, and the sound can be made 
continuous like a vowel; in other words, we have the humming 
sound ; this is the nasal labial, while b is called the vocal 
labial. The fourth labial is/, produced by the upper teeth 
and the lower lip coming together, and the breath passing 
through them without voice ; this is the whispered or aspirate 
labial. When voice is heard through this last closure, we have 
v, or the second vocal labial, called the vocal aspirate. 
Lastly, a sound may be emitted through the closed lips, 
making them vibrate or shake like a reed, as in the sound 
prr : this is the vibrating labial, or the labial r. A similar 
series can be described in the Palatals. The mute bein^ t the 
vocal is d ; there are two forms of the nasal, n and I ,• the 
aspirates are th (thumb), s, sh, arising from slightly differing 
positions of the tongue in its contact with the palate; the 
vocals, or audible forms of these, are th (thy), z, j: the vibratory 
palatal is the common r. The Gutturals likewise show the 



MENTAL PHENOMENA OF THE VOICE. 309 

same list of varieties. First k the mute ; then the vocal g ; 
the nasal ng, a simple sound, though spelt in our language with 
two letters ; the aspirate ch (Scotch and German) as in loch, 
together with its fainter form h; the vocal aspirate gh un- 
known, and almost unpronounceable by us ; and the vibratory 
ghr, occurring as a burr in some people's utterance. This 
classification, for which we are indebted to Dr. Arnott, may be 
summed up in the following table: — 



Labials. 



Mute . . . 
Vocal . 
Nasal . . . 
Aspirate . 
Vocal Aspirate 
Vibratory 



f 
v 
prr 



Palatals. 




Gutturals. 


t 




k 


d 




9 


n, I 




ng 


th, s, 


sh 


ch, h 


th, z, 


3 


9* 


r 




ghr 



37. Mental Phenomena of Voice. — The voice, being a 
moving or active organ, presents all the mental facts and phe- 
nomena belonging to the moving organs in general. Exercise 
gives birth in it to a mass of feeling of the muscular kind, 
pleasurable when within due limits, with sense of fatigue and 
need of repose. Considering the smallness of the muscles 
concerned, the sense of vocal activity must be considered very 
acute ; a circumstance arising out of the comparatively large 
contingent of nerves supplied to the organ. In this respect 
the voice resembles the eye and probably also the ear, in both 
which a diminutive amount of muscular substance is the seat 
of a powerful sensibility. 

The tension of the vocal organs is always accompanied 
with an action of the chest, and this action needs to be 
stronger than an ordinary expiration. When the cords are 
made vocal without any reinforcement of the chest, we have 
a groan, or a wail, according as the tension is small or great, 
the one being a deep tone and the other acute. But such is 
the association between high notes and increased exertion of 
the lungs that it is difficult to produce a wail with only the 
ordinary breathing force. 

In appreciating the pleasure springing out of vocal 
exercise, or the sensibility of the larynx under exertion, 



310 OF THE INSTINCTS. 

we must allow for this action of the respiratory organs, 
and also for the sensation of the resulting sounds on the ear. 
There can be little doubt, however, that when both these are 
deducted from the effect, there still remains a very considerable 
source of pleasure due solely to the play of the laryngeal 
muscles, aud which renders the free employment of the voice 
an important item of bodily gratification. 

38. Besides the feelings of pleasure or of pain diffused 
from the vocal apparatus, there is as in all the other muscles 
a distinctive sense of the degree of tension of each separate 
muscle, such as to indicate the varying positions of the 
tube and the vocal cords. We have one feeling for the 
absence of tension, another for a low degree, a third for a 
higher degree, and so on. The sound produced by each of 
those stages comes to be associated with the corresponding 
muscular condition of the organ, and hence we get the power 
of imitating sounds or of producing them at pleasure. The 
association between the sound in the ear and the vocal 
position and movement producing it, enables the one to recal 
or reinstate the other ; which could not be if there were not 
a distinctive feeling or consciousness due to each separate 
vocal position. This sensibility belongs to all muscles what- 
ever, and according to the degree of delicacy of it is the 
fineness of execution belonging to the several organs. If very 
small differences of vocal tension can be distinctively appreciated, 
the voice will be able the sooner to fix with precision all given 
sounds, just as the hand will acquire delicacy in handicraft 
operations through the same circumstance. 

The voice is thus pre-eminently a voluntary organ. It has 
that abundant spontaneous activity which I consider the 
foundation circumstance, the first term, the earliest fact, 
of volition ; pouring itself forth of its own accord in many 
various forms, each ready to be linked with the sound 
produced, in the process of voluntary acquisition. The 
centres that determine vocal action seem disposed to take on 
a highly charged condition, and to discharge themselves 
at intervals without any stimulus from without ; while with 
the aid of a stimulus their exertion becomes most profuse. 



THE VOICE AN ORGAN OF EXPRESSION. SI 1 

39. In all probability, the high tension of the medulla 
oblongata or other vocal centres is what makes the voice so 
ready to burst out under Emotion. Intense feelings affect 
the whole of the moving organs, but all organs are not equally 
moved. The parts first acted on by any feeling are the 
features and the respiratory and vocal organs, which are 
therefore by pre-eminence the organs of expression, some of 
them, indeed, serving hardly any other purpose. 

In following out, under the head of Intellect, the processes 
of acquisition, the voice will have to be repeatedly adverted 
to. The acquirements made by it both in music and in 
articulation are exceedingly numerous and complicated. As 
a medium in the processes of intelligence the vocal powers 
also hold a very high position. 

There is no other special activity important enough to be 
described in similar detaiL The organs of mastication are all 
very intelligible, and the process is an acquired one. The 
destructive and constructive Instincts are remarkable chiefly 
in the inferior Animals. 



BOOK II. 



INTELLECT. 



LET us now proceed to view the Intellect, or the thinking 
portion of the mind. The various faculties known under 
such names as Memory, Reason, Abstraction, Judgment, &c, 
are modes or varieties of Intellect. Although we can scarcely 
ever exert this portion of our mental system in separation 
from the other elements of mind, namely, Emotion and Voli- 
tion, yet scientific method requires it to be described apart. 

The full meaning and extent of this branch of the subject 
will be best seen from the ample detail that we are now to 
enter upon. The general characters that distinguish the Intel- 
ligence from the two other fundamental properties of mind 
may be expressed as follows : — 

i. The persistence or continuance of sensations and other 
mental states, after the withdrawal of the external agent, or 
stimulus, is a notable characteristic of the mind, not implied, 
as it seems to me, in the mere fact of consciousness. In con- 
sequence of this property we are enabled to live a life in ideas, 
in addition to the life in actualities. 

2. The power of recovering, or reviving, under the form of 
ideas, past or extinct sensations* and feelings of all kinds, 
without the originals, and by mental agencies alone. These 
mental agencies are not included either in Emotion or in 



* Although we can hardly avoid using such terms as ' recover/ ' revive,' 
' reproduce,' ' recollect,' with reference to Sensations, it is to be borne in 
mind that there is a radical difference between the Sensation and the recol- 
lection of the Sensation, or what is properly termed the Idea. This funda- 
mental and uuerasable difference relates to the sense of objective reality 
which belongs to the sensation, and not to the idea. The sensation caused 
by the sight of the sun is one thing, and the idea or recollection of the sun 
is another thing ; for although the two resemble each other, they yet differ 
in this vital particular. For many purposes, the idea can stand in the room 
of the sensation ; the recollection of things often answers the same ends as 
the real presence. But there is one great question connected with our 
science, in which this distinction is the turning point of the problem, namely, 
the question as to our perception and belief of an external world. In dis- 
cussing that subject, we shall have to attend closely to the circumstances 
that characterise a sensation as distinct from the counterpart idea. 



316 THE INTELLECT. 

Volition, and therefore require a place of their own. The two 
properties of continuance and recoverability by mental causes, 
which are probably at bottom the same property, make the 
fundamental and comprehensive distinction of Intellect. 

3. The discrimination of conscious states, or the comparing 
of them one with another, with sense of agreement and dif- 
ference, belongs to this department of mind. The fact of per- 
sistence is herein implied, for comparison cannot take place 
unless the traces of the past exist along with the present. I 
have already exemplified this power of discrimination, in 
speaking of the more intellectual part of the feelings of move- 
ment and sensations. 

4. The acquired powers grow out of the properties of 
Intellect, and are not involved in Emotion, or in Volition. 

5. Originality, or invention, is sustained by processes 
purely intellectual. By these processes, the compass of both 
Emotion and Action is enlarged in a most remarkable degree. 

6. It is, I believe, a fact that Consciousness is not indis- 
pensable to the operations of Intellect.* If so, this is a broad 
line of distinction between Intellect and the other regions of 
mind, for Consciousness makes up one of those regions, and is 
an essential part of the other. 

Intellect may work in different degrees of combination 
with the remaining functions of mind. Science, is the best 
example of its most pure manifestation. When blended with 
Emotion, the most interesting product is Fine Art ; as the 
handmaid of Volition, directed to practical ends, it yields the 
higher combinations of Industry and Business. 



* ' Mr. Stewart has made an ingenious attempt to explain sundry of 
the phsenomena referred to the occult principle of habit, in his chapter on 
Attention, in the first volume of his Elements of the Philosophy of the 
Human Mind. It is to be regretted that he had not studied (he even 
treats it as inconceivable) the Leibnitzian doctrine of what has not been 
well denominated, obscure perceptions, or ideas — that is, acts and affections 
of mind, which, manifesting their existence in their effects, are themselves 
out of consciousness or apperception. The fact of such latent mental modi- 
fications is now established beyond all rational doubt ; and on the supposition 
of their reality, we are able to solve various psychological phsenomena other- 
wise inexplicable. Among these are many of those attributed to Habit.' — 
Sie W. Hamilton, Edition of Eeid, p. 551. 



LAWS OF ASSOCIATION. 817 

The revival, or reappearance of past states of mind by 
mere mental operations, is subject to fixed laws. These became 
the subject of investigation soon after the commencement of 
speculative thought. They are termed Laws of Mental Associa- 
tion, Suggestion, or Reproduction; and the first explicit state- 
ment of them is due to Aristotle.* I shall treat them as four in 
number, two being simple and fundamenal, and two complex. 
The exposition of Intellect in the present Book will be the 
exposition of these Laws. 



* See Sir W. Hamilton's Contribution toivards a History of the 
Doctrine of Mental Suggestion or Association. — Eeid, Note D.* * 



. 



CHAPTER I. 

LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

l. HHHIS associating principle is the basis of Memory, Habit, 
J- and the Acquired Powers in general. Writers on 
Mental Science have described it under various names. Sir 
William Hamilton terms it the law of 'Redintegration/ regard- 
ing it as the principle whereby one part of a whole brings up 
the other parts, as when one syllable of a name recals the rest, 
or one house in a street suggests the succeeding ones. The 
associating links called Order in Time, Order in Place, and 
Cause and Effect are all included under it. We might 
also name it the law of Adhesion, Mental Adhesiveness, or 
Acquisition. 

The following is a general statement of this mode of mental 
reproduction. 

Actions, Sensations, and States of Feeling, occurring 
together or in close succession, tend to grow together, 
or cohere in such a way that when any one of them is 
afterwards presented to the mind, the others are apt 
to be brought up in idea. 
There are various circumstances or conditions that regulate 
and modify the operation of this principle, so as to render the 
adhesive growth more or less rapid and secure. These will be 
best brought out by degrees in the progress of the. exposition. 
As a general rule, repetition is necessary in order to render 
coherent in the mind a train or aggregate of images, as, for 
example, the successive aspects of a public way, with a suffi- 
cient degree of force to make one suggest the others at an 
after period. The precise degree of repetition needed depends 
on many circumstances, the quality of the individual mind 
being one. 



319 



MOVEMENTS. 



2. I shall commence the detailed exposition of the Law of 
Contiguity with the case of Muscular Activity, including 
under this head all kinds of movements, attitudes, and efforts 
of resistance. 

Through the intellectual property of adhesiveness or plas- 
ticity, as expressed by this principle of contiguous association, 
movements can be linked together in trains and made to 
succeed each other, with the same certainty and invariable 
sequence as we find in the instinctive successions of rhythmical 
action already discussed. The complicated evolutions of a 
dance come to flow of their own accord, no less than the 
movements on all fours of the newly dropped lamb. 

We may begin with remarking the operation of the adhesive 
principle upon the spontaneous and instinctive actions them- 
selves. These actions are plainly confirmed and invigorated 
by repetition. Although many creatures can walk as soon as 
they are born, they walk much better after a little practice. 
Here, however, we cannot easily make allowance for the 
growth of the parts themselves, apart from the effect of 
exercise. The muscles of the limbs increase in size, and the 
nerve-centres that stimulate and organize the rhythmical 
movements acquire more development through time alone. 
We are, therefore, not in a good position, in the case of the 
instincts, to trace and estimate the force of adhesive growth 
due to this principle of contiguity. But knowing, as we do, 
how the force operates in all the voluntary operations, we are 
entitled to presume that it works also in the various instinctive 
operations. By practice, that is, by repetition, the infant 
sucks with more ease and vigour. In learning to walk, exer- 
cise undoubtedly concurs with the primitive alternating ten- 
dency of the limbs. The muscles of the body are strengthened 
by the mere action of growth ; this growth is accelerated if 
they are regularly exercised within limits ; and the very same 
is likely to be true of the nerves and nerve-centres that dictate 
the flow and alternation of muscular movements. 



320 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

I have endeavoured to establish as a fact the spontaneous 
commencement of all the actions that we term voluntary- 
Thus the limbs, the features, the eyes, the voice, the tongue, 
the jaw, the head, the trunk, &c, commence to move in con- 
sequence of an unprompted flow of stimulus from the nerve- 
centres ; this flow will be sometimes to one set of members 
and sometimes to another, so that the organs may act sepa- 
rately and independently, under the influence thus imparted. 
Now such spontaneous movements are without doubt con- 
firmed by repetition, and are thereby made to recur more 
readily in the future. Any movement struck out by central 
energy leaves as it were a track behind, and a less amount 
of nervous impulse will be required to set it on a 
second time. By a spontaneous stimulus the hands are 
closed ; the act of closing determines a current or bent in that 
direction, and the next exertion is so much the easier. By 
one prompting the arms are raised and lowered alternately; 
by another they are moved forwards and backwards ; in the 
course of a few repetitions adhesiveness comes in aid of the 
inward stimulus, and the movements grow more frequent and 
more decided. Through the spontaneous action of the centres 
the eyes are moved to and fro, and iteration gives facility to 
the exercise. So the voice is moved variously by an impulse 
from within, and each movement and note is made easier for 
the next occasion when the centres discharge their energy by 
that channel. The tongue is an organ with many movements, 
and all voluntary; these commence of their own accord, and 
are strengthened and as it were developed by repetition. The 
inclinations and sweep of the head, and of the trunk generally, 
are of the same class. The iteration of all these various move- 
ments does not make them voluntary movements in the proper 
sense of the expression ; but it prepares them for becoming 
such by a future and distinct acquisition. It makes them 
recur more frequently and more readily, enhancing the spon- 
taneous impulse of the centres. At one time the voice sounds 
a high note. As to the first stimulus of this effort, we can 
say nothing farther than that with all the active organs there 
is associated a nervous battery for commencing their move- 



ACQUISITION OF COMPLEX MOVEMENTS. 321 

ments. After an interval, the same high note is hit upon by 
a like discharge from the proper centre. When several repe- 
titions have occurred in this way a facility is gained ; either a 
less tension of the centre will originate the note, or it will be 
better sustained when it comes. On a different occasion a 
stream of sound is stimulated at a low pitch, which after a 
number of opportunities comes to be a ready effort of the 
organ. Thus it is that a variety of detached movements are 
getting themselves prepared for subsequent use. 

To persons that have not reflected on the very great 
difficulty and labour attending the growth of voluntary move- 
ments in infancy, this hypothesis of spontaneity so much 
dwelt upon will seem uncalled for and unlikely. But I shall 
have to show at a later stage how impossible it is to account 
for the origin of volitional acts without a supposition of this 
nature. 

The movements inspired by Emotion are also cultivated 
and confirmed by repetition ; and a certain increase of power 
is gained in this way. The voice is developed by crying, the 
trunk and limbs and features by gesticulation. There is no 
proof that the emotional stimulus of the movements con- 
tributes in any degree to give the voluntary command of 
them ; there seems to be a great gulf permanently fixed 
between these two sources of active display. Emotion cultivates 
itself solely. The vigour of gesticulation may be increased, but 
not the vigour of setting on movements independently of the 
excitement of the feelings. 

3. We pass next to the acquisition of trains and aggregates 
of movements in the ordinary course of education in mechani- 
cal art and handicraft. I assume the case of an individual 
already able to command the limbs, or other parts, as directed 
by another person, or by an example set for imitation ; and 
postpone the consideration of the mode in which this voluntary 
power is itself acquired, as demanding a far more subtle line 
of investigation. 

The simplest acquisition is the case where something is 
added to a movement already established. Take the case of 
walking, and suppose that we desire to communicate a peculiar 

Y 



322 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

set of the limb, for example the turning out of the toes. A 
voluntary act, directed to the muscle that rotates the thigh out- 
ward, gives the requisite position to the foot ; and the act is 
sustained while the walking movement goes on. By this means 
there grows up in course of time an adhesion between the 
tension of the rotator muscles and the several movements of 
walking, and at last they coalesce in one complex whole, as if 
they had been united in the original mechanism of the system. 
This agglutination of acts is very common among our mecha- 
nical acquirements. Thus in learning to walk, a vast deal of 
adjustment is necessary before we can maintain our balance. 
We require, along with the movements of the limbs, to execute 
coinciding movements of the head, arms, and trunk, in order 
that the body may never depart from a balanced posture. 
These remoter movements become so fused with the main 
action as to be inseparable from it. The same stream of ner- 
vous action that keeps up the alternation of the limbs, directs 
a measured current towards specific muscles of the body and 
upper extremities, and the entire complication seems as if it 
were but a single member. 

In the foregoing examples we have included two different 
cases, both coming under the head of agglutination, or coin- 
ciding actions: the one is where a fixed tension is maintained 
in the accessory action, as in walking with the foot turned 
outwards, the other supposes two trains of movements fused 
together. There is abundance of instances of both kinds, and 
the principle of operation is identical in the two. I shall now 
take an illustration of a succession of actions formed exclu- 
sively by the adhesive principle. The sequence of acts in 
eating is an example taken from our earliest acquirements. 
The lifting of the morsel by the spoon or fork, the carrying it 
to the mouth, the opening of the mouth at the right moment, 
the action of the jaws and tongue, all exhibit a succession of 
regulated acts fixed into mechanical coherence and certainty 
by the mere fact that they have been made to succeed each 
other a great number of times. The action of carrying the 
hand to the mouth is followed by the opening of the jaws, 



PURE MUSCULAR ADHESION. 323 

as surely as the two alternate acts concerned in breathing 
give birth to each other. 

In a great number of mechanical successions, the feeling 
of the effect produced at each stage is an essential link in the 
transition to the next. Thus in writing, the sight of the part 
last formed is the preamble to what comes next, as much so 
as the motion executed; in which case the sequence is not 
one of pure motions — one motion bringing on the next in the 
habitual order. But the mixture of sensations and motions 
in complex trains will form a separate head; I am desirous, 
at this stage, to confine the illustration to examples of move- 
ments linked together, without any other element being pre- 
sent. As, however, the guidance of the feeling is necessary 
in the course of learning any mechanical effort, the fixing of 
movements in a train independently of such guidance is the 
last stage, or highest perfection, of mechanical acquirement. 
Thus, in playing on a pianoforte, and attending to some- 
thing else at the same time, the sequence must be one almost 
entirely of movements : that is to say, each stroke is associated 
with another definite stroke or touch through the whole suc- 
cession of the piece. But even in this case, it is difficult to 
say how much there is of a kind of latent sensation in the 
fingers and the ear, sufficient for the purposes of association, 
acting along with the association of pure movements. 

A deaf person speaking must depend almost entirely on 
the associated sequence of movements ; the only other assist- 
ance being the muscular feelings themselves, which always 
count for something. In saying over words committed by 
rote, the sequence of articulate motions is perfect. One word 
uttered brings on the next independent of either hearing or 
the feeling of articulation. This is a proof of the very great 
aptitude for associated movement belonging to the vocal 
organs ; for hardly any other part of the body, not even the 
hands, can acquire such perfection of unconscious dexterity. 
In knitting, there is probably the same sequence of move- 
ments, acquired after thousands of repetitions. The simpler 
figures of dancing can be gone through with this mechanical 

y2 



324 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

and unconscious certainty after a great amount of practice ; 
but the docility of the lower limbs is far inferior to the hands, 
while I should be disposed to reckon these second to the 
voice. 

The difficulty of forming a perfect association of mere 
movements, and the dependence of most of the mechanical 
trains upon the sense of the effect produced are curiously 
illustrated in the cases of paralysed sensibility. Thus there is 
an often quoted case of a woman who could not hold a baby in 
her arms except by keeping her eyes fixed upon it. She had 
no sense of weight in the arms, and the sustained tension of 
the muscles was not sufficiently associated with the taking up 
of the child, by the muscular link alone. The sight of 
the eye was able to supply the want of arm sensibility, but 
both could not be dispensed with. 

It is the linking together of unconscious movements that 
makes the human framework purely automatic and mechanical ; 
constituting a series of actions exactly parallel to the in- 
stinctive arrangements so often alluded to. To get rid of 
consciousness as an essential part of any piece of execution is 
to eliminate the foremost characteristic of mind ; this is not 
done so long as the sense of effect is necessary to keep up 
the action. 

Although very few of the cases of mechanical acquirement 
in general can belong to the class we are now considering, there 
are important distinctions of character founded on the facility 
of acquiring trains of movement so as to keep them up with 
the least possible help from the guiding sensations and ideas. 
The trains of action thus acquired cost the smallest amount of 
mental fatigue in the performance ; they may, moreover, go 
on with the mind employed upon other things. In the 
execution of work these are valuable characteristics ; on the 
other hand, inasmuch as all such actions cease to occupy the 
mind, they leave it a prey to ennui if other occupation is not 
provided. Thus in devotional ceremonies that have reached 
this point of adhesion, there is apt to be a loss of interest. 

4. The inward process whereby movements repeated in the 
same succession acquire coherence and bring on one another 



ADHESIVENESS A SPECIAL PROPERTY OF MIND. 325 

in the proper order is one of the hidden qualities of mind. 
We may describe the effect, and specify some of the important 
physical conditions that control it, but we can go no further. 
It is a fundamental property of the mental and nervous 
system, and is unique in its kind, there being nowhere 
any other instance of it known to us, no other substance 
but nerve possessing the like property. 

The actions thus associated are voluntary actions ; they are 
stimulated from the cerebral centre, and it is within the 
cerebral hemispheres that the adhesion takes place. A stream 
of conscious nervous energy, no matter how stimulated, 
causes a muscular contraction, a second stream plays upon 
another muscle ; and the fact that these currents flow together 
through the brain is sufficient to make a partial fusion of 
the two, which in time becomes a total fusion, so that one 
cannot be commenced without the other commencing also. 
The current that directs the lifted arm to the mouth is part of 
a complex stream that opens the jaw ; the current that gives 
position in the fingers of a flute-player is associated with 
another that fixes the lips, and a third that compresses 
the chest with a measured force. In virtue of passing 
through the common centre of the nervous system together, 
the many different coinciding streams become after due 
continuance an aggregated unity, broken up only by some 
more powerful alliance. 

In the same manner may we express what happens 
in successions of acts. If the brain stimulates a given move- 
ment, such as the utterance of an articulate syllable, and 
if after that a second syllable is pronounced, there is a con- 
tinuity established between the two, a sort of highway made, 
and a bent given to pass from the one act to the other ; in 
the course of time and repetition the connexion is fully knit, 
and the transition becomes mechanical or automatic. The 
acts must be mental or conscious acts, lying in the course 
of the common stream of mental activity : which stream 
is turned first upon the one, passes next to the other, thereby, 
as the effect shows, establishing a tendency towards the same 
direction ever afterwards. 



326 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

It may be very fairly assumed that this is a process of 
growth like the natural development of the nerves and 
muscles, themselves. This view is ably expressed by Dr. 
Carpenter. Whether the growth lies in forming new cells, 
or in modifying the internal conductibility of the nerve fibres 
and vesicles, we are unable to say ; there is no reason why 
both effects should not take place. But the circumstances 
connected with the process of education strongly favour the 
above comparison. We find, for example, that new acquire- 
ments are easiest and most rapid during early life, the time 
of most vigorous growth of the body generally. We find 
also that rest and nutrition are as much needed for educating 
the organs as for keeping up the bodily health. There 
is, moreover, a bound fixed to the rate of acquirements, and 
no amount of practice can enable us to get over it. The 
plastic or hardening operation takes a certain interval of time, 
and although the current be never so much sustained, by 
keeping at a thing, the rate of acquisition is not increased in 
the same degree. 

In successions of movement, the completed act of one 
movement is the link that sets on the next. But it is in vain, 
at the present point of our knowledge, to enquire minutely 
into the steps of this subtle sequence. 

5. The conditions that regulate the pace of acquisition, or 
the cohesion of set trains of movement have a high practical, 
as well as a theoretical interest. Some of these conditions 
are common to all kinds of acquisitions, while others are limited 
in their application. Those that relate to movement are the 
following : — 

(1.) The command already acquired over the organs. This 
throws us back upon previous acquisitions, and upon deep 
peculiarities of character, that need not at present be dis- 
cussed. But it is well known that some persons, in com- 
mencing manipulation, have a much better command of their 
movements than others; that is, they get more readily at a 
posture or movement pointed out to their imitation. Previous 
to the plastic fusion must come the proper performance of the 



CIRCUMSTANCES THAT GOVERN ACQUISITION. 827 

separate acts that have to be made coherent. It is necessary 
to sound each note well before singing an air. So with all 
the minute shades of movement entering into a delicate 
operation requiring flexibility of organ, and the power of 
graduating the stress exerted according to the nicest shades 
of difference. 

(2.) There is a natural force of adhesiveness, specific to 
each constitution, and distinguishing one individual from 
another. This property, like almost every other assignable 
property of human nature, I consider to be very unequally 
distributed. We can get at an estimate of such primitive 
differences only after allowing for all the differences in 
the oth r circumstances that do not depend upon character* 
In the case now before us — the acquisition of movements — 
the difference is apparent in the very unequal facility shown 
by boys in the same school, or recruits drilled together, in 
mastering their movements. The power of acquiring trains 
of movements easily is the prime requisite in the education of 
the army, and in all mechanical arts, both as enabling the 
individual to attain a high pitch of dexterity and effective- 
ness, and as dispensing with the sense of effort and con- 
sciousness in general, in other words, with mental exertion 
and fatigue. 

(3.) The main circumstance, next to original endowment, 
is Repetition or Continuance. In proportion to the repetition 
is the rate of cohesion, regard being had to the necessity of 
reposing the organs. It is possible to make up for all other 
defects by repetition. We term that constitution most adhe- 
sive by nature, that needs the fewest repetitions to become 
perfect. 

(4.) The amount of nervous energy concentrated in the 
act is a vital circumstance in determining the rapidity of fixing 
it. This is a variable thing in the same individual. 

In the first place it depends on the nervous vigour of the 
moment, as contrasted with feebleness, exhaustion, or lassitude. 
The voluntary energy that sustains an action rises and falls 
with the condition of the body; hence the freshness of the 



. 



328 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

morning and early part of the day determines the best time 
for drill. So also good health is a condition of education 
in general. 

But the concentration of nervous energy may be prevented 
by the diversion of the mind into some other channel, or the 
expenditure of the inward power on other efforts. Distraction 
or pre-occupation effectually checks our progress in any 
attempt; the motions may be made, but the coherence is 
feeble. Thus a child may go through the repetition of its 
lessons, but while the mind is diverted elsewhere, there is no 
progress in fixing them. Intense pleasure or pain, or emotion 
of any kind, excited by causes foreign to the work in hand, 
use up the mental expenditure, the currents of circulation and 
nutrition, that ought to go to the plastic process. 

The nervous energy may be called forth by mere volition. 
A strong determination to learn a movement is very much 
in our favour. Some people cannot determine anything 
vigorously; in others the energy wrapt up in any act of voli- 
tion is very high. 

This voluntary effort may be stimulated by emotion or 
excitement. Terror is a very common stimulus applied to a 
learner. The objection to it is the cost, both in suffering and 
nervous waste. The best of all stimulants is a strong liking 
for the thing in hand. 

It is one of the peculiarities of what is called the nervous 
temperament, or a nervous system naturally prone to vigorous 
exertion (just as some constitutions are strong in muscle, and 
others in digestion), to expend itself copiously in all its efforts, 
voluntary or emotional. This is necessarily favourable to acqui- 
sitions, as to every other mental manifestation. 

(5.) In mechanical acquirements we must not omit bodily 
strength as a favouring circumstance. The power of con- 
tinuing the exercise without fatigue, and the great deter- 
mination of nutritive matter to the muscle at least, which is 
implied in a strong bodily frame, cannot but be favourable to 
the fixing of movements and the forming of habits. Hence 
strong men may be expected to acquire athletic and handi- 
craft accomplishments more easily than others. But although 



ASSOCIATION OF FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT. 329 

I am disposed to put some stress upon this point, I must 
account the quality of the muscle of far inferior importance, 
and indeed quite trifling in comparison with the quality of the 
nervous framework. 

(6.) This leads me therefore to the last condition proper to 
be noticed in connexion with acquired movements, namely, 
the spontaneous activity of the system. The abundance of the 
natural or spontaneous activity makes the active or energetic 
temperament, and promotes the acquisition of new movements. 
Theproof of this affirmation comes principally from an inductive 
examination of active temperaments, from which I believe it 
will receive ample confirmation, allowing always for the other 
conditions above enumerated, some of them quite as important 
as the present. It is usually the men of natural and abounding 
activity that make good sportsmen, adroit mechanics, and able 
contenders in games of bodily skill. Nor is the coincidence 
at all unlikely in itself; the same nervous power that disposes 
the frame to spontaneous movement is likely to aid the plastic 
operation that fixes movements in consecutive trains. 

We have now before our view the principle of growth that 
confers upon human beings mechanical art and the power of 
labour and endurance. By it we can create new circles of 
power, make others fall into decay, and distribute the human 
forces anew, so as to adapt them more expressly for each 
man's necessities and position in life. 

FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT. 

6. The continuance and revival of a, feeling of movement, 
without the movement itself, make a new and distinct case 
for the associating principle to work upon : a case, too, of very 
great interest as introducing us into the sphere of Thought. 

This transition from the external to the internal, from the 
Reality to the Idea, — the greatest leap that can be taken 
within the compass of the present work, — needs to be introduced 
by a consideration of the question, what is the probable seat, 
or local embodiment, of a sensation or mechanical feeling, 
when persisting after the fact, or when revived without the 



330 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

reality ? The discussion of this question will interrupt, for a 
few pages, our exemplification of the law of contiguous 
adhesiveness. 

A movement is a complex thing ; looked at from without, 
it is an exertion of physical or mechanical force ; to the in- 
ward consciousness it yields a manifestation such as we have 
endeavoured to describe.* Both the one and the other may 
be associated in trains, by virtue of the same law of adhesive- 
ness on repetition ; but what is more, the Feelings of a series 
of movements may be associated and revive one another 
without the movements themselves being revived. A mechanic 
can repeat to his mind all the operations of a day's work just 
as well as he can go through the reality. This implies the 
possibility of separating the feelings from the acts. We can 
easily conceive these two to have been constituted inseparable. 
We can suppose such an arrangement of things, that the 
feeling of movement or resistance should continue during the 
movements of exertion, and become extinct when exertion 
ceases, like the disappearance of light when a lamp is blown 
out. So in the various sensations of taste, smell, touch, 
hearing, sight, the same limit might have existed ; the sensi- 
bility might have lasted only during the actual contact or pre- 
sence of the object, and the consciousness have become blank 
and silent the instant a sound ceased or the eye turned itself 
aside from a spectacle. This, however, is not what we actually 
find. A state of feeling or sensation, once stirred, remains for 
a longer or shorter time after the stimulus ceases ; the nerve 
currents, once commenced, persist of themselves by their own 
natural energy, and only die away by degrees. Much depends 
on this quality of perseverance ; it is one of the conditions on 
which thought and intelligence depend. The life of ideas, the 
enjoyment and suffering derived from the Past, would be 
extinct but for this ; and intellectual comparisons and combi- 
nations would be impossible. 

7. All feelings do not persist alike ; the most persistent 
are the most intellectual. In all minds the persistence is not 



* See Book I., chap. 1. 



FEELINGS CAN PERSIST AFTER THE CAUSE. 331 

equally good, whence some minds are better fitted for the 
operations of intelligence than others. The first impetus 
depends on the outward cause, the retention of the echo is a 
quality of the recipient mechanism. A cadence falls on the 
ear and produces a wave of feeling ; whether that feeling shall 
last for some seconds or minutes in all its strength or dis- 
tinctness, or whether it shall immediately fade into dimness 
and confusion, depends on the quality of the ear and of the 
nerve circles associated with it, and on the cerebral mechanism 
at large ; the difference is recognised in common language ; 
we speak of a good ear or a bad ear. The retentiveness of 
impressions is the foundation of everything else in the intel- 
lectual fabric. The power of the chords once struck to 
vibrate by their own energy is the beginning of the second 
stage of mind, of that wherein the past and the present are 
brought together. "We cannot look at two outward things in 
the same instant of time ; and if the impression of the first 
were to die when we pass to the second, there could be no 
comparison and no feeling of preference. Volition would be 
impossible ; for that supposes a preference of one state of 
mind to another, a past to a present, or a present to a past. 

8. In discussing the Sensations and Muscular feelings in 
the first Book, we were obliged to assume this quality, although 
it belongs properly to Intellect. The degree of persistence in 
the absence of the original, made one of the distinguishing 
features in describing sensations, some, as the organic feelings, 
having a low order of persistence ; touch, hearing, and sight 
being much more endowed in this respect. It is always to be 
remembered, that although scientific method requires us to 
take the different aspects of mind apart, yet in the mind itself 
they are always working together ; Emotion, Intellect, and 
Volition, concur in almost every manifestation. In treating of 
one we are obliged to assume the others, if we do not specifi- 
cally bring them forward. Thus it was impossible to do 
justice to the Sensations without touching on their per- 
sistence or Intellectual quality, and on their power to excite 
action, which is their Volitional quality. It was necessary to 
imply the sense of discrimination based on this retentiveness, 






S32 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

in order to show the use of the different senses in making us 
acquainted with the outer world, a point to be more fully 
brought out in the present Book. 

9. All the muscular feelings already described, both the 
organic feelings of Muscle, and the states produced by exercise 
in its various forms, can be sustained for some time after the 
physical cause has ceased. All the Sensations of the senses 
can be sustained in like manner, some more and some less 
easily ; and they can afterwards be revived as ideas by means 
of the associating forces. What then is the mode of existence 
of these feelings bereft of their outward support and first 
cause ? in what particular form do they possess or occupy the 
mental and cerebral system ? This question carries us as far 
as we are able to go into the cerebral process of intelligence. 
It admits of two different answers or assumptions, the one old 
and widely prevalent, the other new but better founded. The 
old notion supposes that the brain is a sort of receptacle of the 
impressions of sense, where they lie stored up in a chamber 
quite apart from the recipient apparatus, to be manifested 
again to the mind when occasion calls. But the modern 
theory of the brain already developed in the Introduction 
suggests a totally different view. We have seen that the 
brain is only one part of the course of nervous action ; that 
the completed circles take in the nerves and the extremities 
of the body; that nervous action consists of a current passing 
through these complete circles, or to and fro between the 
ganglia and the organs of sense and motion ; and that short 
of a completed course no nervous action exists. The idea of a 
cerebral closet is quite incompatible with the real manner of 
the working of nerve. Seeing then that a sensation in the 
first instance diffuses nerve currents through the interior of 
the brain outwards to the organs of expression and movement, 
the persistence of that sensation after the outward exciting 
cause is withdrawn, can only be a continuance of the same 
diffusive currents, perhaps less intense, but not otherwise 
different. The shock remaining in the ear and the brain after 
the firing of artillery must pass through the same circles, and 
act in the same way, as during the actual sound. We have 



SEAT OF REVIVED IMPRESSIONS. 333 

no reason for believing that in the self-sustaining condition 
the impression changes its seat, or passes into some new circles 
that have the special property of retaining it. Every part 
actuated after the shock must have been actuated by the 
shock, only more powerfully. With this single difference of 
intensity, the mode of existence of a sensation enduring after 
the fact is essentially the same as its mode of existence during 
the fact ; the same organs are occupied, the same current 
action goes on. We see in the continuance of the attitude 
and expression the identical outward appearances ; and these 
appearances are produced by the course of power being still 
by the same routes. Moreover, the identity in the inward 
mode of consciousness implies that the manner of action within 
the brain is unaltered. 

10. Now if this be the case with impressions persisting 
when the cause has ceased, what view are we to adopt con- 
cerning impressions reproduced by mental causes alone, or 
without the aid of the original, as in ordinary recollection ? 
What is the manner of occupation of the brain with a 
resuscitated feeling of resistance, a smell, or a sound ? There 
is only one answer so far as I can see. The renewed feeling 
occupies the very same parts and in the same manner as the 
original feeling, and no other parts, nor in any other 
manner that can be assigned. I imagine that if our present 
knowledge of the brain had been present to the earliest specu- 
lators, no other hypothesis than this would ever have occurred 
to any one. For where should a past feeling be re-embodied 
if not in the same organs as the feeling when present. It is 
only in this way that its identity can be preserved ; a feeling 
differently embodied must to all intents and purposes be a 
different feeling, unless we suppose a duplicate brain on which 
everything past is to be transferred. But such duplication 
has no proof and serves no end. 

It is possible, however, to adduce facts that set in a 
still clearer light this re-occupation of the sentient circles with 
recovered impressions and feelings. Take first the recovery of 
feelings of energetic action, as when reviving the exploits and 
exertions of yesterday. It is a notorious circumstance that if 



834 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

there be much excitement attending their recollection, it 
is with difficulty that we can prevent ourselves from getting 
up to repeat them. The rush of feeling has gone on the old 
tracks, and seizes the same muscles, and would go the length 
of actually stimulating them to a repetition. A child cannot 
describe anything that it was engaged in without acting it out 
to the full length that the circumstances will permit. A dog 
dreaming sets his feet a-going, and sometimes barks. The 
suppression of the full stage of perfect resuscitation needs 
actually an effort of volition, and we are often even incapable 
of the effort. If the recollection were carried on in a separate 
chamber of the brain, it would not press in this way upon the 
bodily organs engaged in the actual transaction. The truth 
can only be that the train of feeling is re-instated on 
the same parts as first vibrated to the original stimulus, 
and that recollection is merely a repetition which does not 
usually go quite the same length ; which stops short of actual 
execution. No better example could be furnished than the 
vocal recollections. When we recal the impression of a word 
or a sentence, if we do not speak it out, we feel the twitter of 
the organs just about to come to that point. The articulating 
parts, — the larynx, the tongue, the lips, — are all sensibly 
excited ; a suppressed articulation is in fact the material 
of our recollection, the intellectual manifestation, the idea of 
speech. Some persons of weak or incontinent nerves can 
hardly think without muttering — they talk to themselves. 
The excitement of the parts may be very slight ; it may 
hardly go the length of affecting the muscles in a sensible way, 
but in the brain and communicating nerves, it still passes the 
same rounds in a greatly enfeebled degree. The purposes of 
intellect can be served even after this extreme enfeeblement 
of the currents, but their nature and their seat have not 
changed. They have not abandoned the walks of living 
articulation because they no longer speak out fully ; they have 
not taken refuge in new chambers of the mind. We feel at 
any moment how easy it is to convert the ideas into utterances ; 
it is only like making a whisper audible, — the mere addition 
of mechanical power. The tendency of the idea of an action 






LOCALITY OF IMPRESSIONS AND IDEAS THE SAME. 835 

to produce the fact, shows that the idea is already the fact in 
a weaker form. If the disposition to yawning exists, the idea 
anywise brought up will excite the action. The suppressive 
effort usually accompanying ideas of action, which renders 
them ideas and not movements, is too feeble in this case, and 
the idea is therefore a repetition to the full of the reality. 

ii. Although at present engaged in preparing the way for 
the association of muscular feelings, yet the doctrine in hand 
being general for all states of mind, I must add some parallel 
instances of Sensation. Muller has furnished several in point. 
He says, ' the mere idea of a nauseous taste can excite the 
sensation even to the production of vomiting. The quality of 
the sensation is the property of the sensitive nerve, which is 
here excited without any external agent. The mere sight oi 
a person about to pass a sharp instrument over glass or 
porcelain is sufficient, as Darwin remarks, to excite the well- 
known sensation in the teeth. The mere thinking of objects 
capable when present of exciting shuddering, is sufficient to 
produce that sensation of the surface in irritable habits. The 
special properties of the higher senses, sight and hearing, are 
rarely thus excited in the waking state, but very frequently 
in sleep and dreams ; for, that the images of dreams are 
really seen,* and not merely present in the imagination, 
any one may satisfy himself in his own person by accus- 
toming himself regularly to open his eyes when waking after 
a dream. The images seen in the dream are then some- 
times still visible, and can be observed to disappear gradually. 
This was remarked by Spinoza, and I have convinced myself 
of it in my own person.' — p. 945. 

These and other cases that might be adduced clearly con- 
firm what has been said as to the return of the nervous 
currents exactly on their old tracks in revived sensation. We 
see that when the revival is energetic it goes the length of 
exciting even the surface of sense itself by a sort of back 
movement. We might think of a blow in the hand until the 
skin was actually irritated and inflamed. The attention very 



* Under opium, images are actually seen. 



336 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

much directed to any part of the body, as the great toe, for 
instance, is apt to produce a distinct feeling in the part, which 
we account for only by supposing a revived nerve current to 
flow there, making a sort of false sensation, an influence from 
within mimicking the influences from without in sensation 
proper.* 

12. The emotions and passions distinct from, but often 
accompanying sensations, are likewise similarly manifested 
in the reality and in the idea. Anger takes exactly the 
same course in the system whether it be at a person 
present or at some one remembered or imagined. Nobody 
ever supposes in this case that the ideal passion is in any 
way different from the actual, or has any other course or 
seat in the brain. So with affection, egotism, fear, or any 
other sentiment or passion. In like manner, the remembrance 
of being angry, or puffed lip, or terrified, will be a resuscita- 
tion of the identical state, and will actuate the same part, 
although the centrifugal wave may not be strong enough to 
agitate the surface as strongly as the original did. The 
recollection of the intenser feelings is necessarily weaker than 
the , reality ; the recollection of some of the less agitating 
sensations and feelings may be quite equal to the reality. 
We can more frequently afford the expenditure necessary for 
reviving mild and gentle emotions. 

13. As regards the resuscitation of emotional states, and the 
more or less perfect resemblance between the revived form 
and the original, there is an exceedingly important observation 
to be made. We have seen again and again that an emotion 
taken in its whole range is a highly complex thing. It may 
begin in some local stimulus, as in a sensation of one of the 
senses, but it creates along with the feeling or the conscious 
state, a wave of diffused action of muscles, secreting organs, 
&c, including gesture, expression of features, and utterance, — 
all which become incorporated as part and parcel of the 
phenomenon. We may divide this total into three distinct 



* This subject has been well illustrated by the experiments of Mr. Braid, 
of Manchester. — See his various writings on Hypnotism, &c. 



COLLATERALS OF A STATE OF FEELING. S37 

stages ; the local stimulus, the feeling or mental manifestation, 
and the diffused action throughout the body. This last effect, 
although inseparable from Emotion, constitutes of itself a new 
stimulus of feeling to mix up with the other. When the 
respiration is quickened, the face flushed, the features 
animated, under a strong passion, these effects are the be- 
ginnings of a new wave of excitement mingling with and 
modifying the original wave. Some portions of the apparatus 
of expression are the seats of very keen sensibility, as, for 
example, the lachrymal secretion ; when this is strongly 
excited by a mental cause a new feeling is generated, which 
may completely submerge the other and give the tone to the 
mind for the time being. 

What I have, therefore, to remark on the re-instatement 
of an emotion is this, that of its various parts and manifesta- 
tions now enumerated, the peculiar mental tone proper to the 
emotion may be difficult to revive while the collateral wave 
of expression is generally easy to re-assume and remember. 
In going over the Sensations, I have had to note some as little 
apt to remain in idea ; this is the case with digestion and the 
organic feelings in general. The exact tone of feeling, the 
precise inward sensation due to a state of hunger, is almost 
irrecoverable and unimaginable in a state of comfortable 
repletion. But the uneasy movements, the fretful tones, the 
language of complaint, are all easy to recal ; they belong to a 
more intellectual part of the system ; and by these we can recover 
some portion of the total fact, which is also just about as much 
as we can communicate to a second person. The digestive state 
for the time being rules the tone of sensation so effectually that 
we cannot by any effort restore the currents due to an entirely 
opposite state ; we can only recover the more revivable 
accompaniments. By this recollection of the accompanying 
expression we may be effectually sjrarred to action for avoid- 
ing the evil and attaining the good, but this does not imply 
that we completely regain the past condition. One may for 
ever avoid the repetition of something that brought on a 
rheumatic attack, without having the full pain brought back 
to the mind from time to time ; it is enough that we recal 

z 



338 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

the gesticulation, accents, language, and trains of thought that 
the state inspired at the time ; these -will cany along with 
them a strength of repulsive feeling sufficiently great to con- 
trol the actions for the future. Those organic states are in 
strong contrast to the sensations of sight and hearing, which 
may be revived nearly to the letter. We can recover a picture 
or vision of fancy almost as exactly as we saw it, though not 
so strongly. This gives to these senses their intellectual 
character. We do not require the help of the collateral 
movements to restore the sensation of a landscape ; we can 
repossess ourselves of the exact scene as it lay to the eye; in 
fact, the sensation itself is the most retainable part of the 
whole. In organic states the remembered expression with 
difficulty brings up some faint shadow of the sensation ; in 
the higher senses the sensation persists better than the 
collaterals. 

This explanation is both pertinent for future purposes, and 
necessary in order to understand precisely in what acceptation 
we have spoken of some feelings as more intellectual than 
others. A state of suffering wholly irrecoverable in its exact 
mental character, may leave a life-long impression through the 
attendant circumstances, the actions, sights, sounds, thoughts, 
and aversions, all which, being pre-eminently recoverable in 
idea, can be lived over again at any distance of time. Thus 
it is that the less enduring states of mind may be buoyed up 
by the more lasting impressions that keep them company. 

14. It seems not improper to introduce here a caution 
against a diseased persistency of impressions that sometimes 
occurs, and is the very opposite of the retentiveness now under 
consideration. In states of terror, feverish anxiety, and nervous 
weakness, particular subjects take hold of the system and 
cannot be shaken off. Doubtless such things make them- 
selves remembered, but at a great expense ; for the diseased 
flow of the currents of the brain wastes a vast amount of its 
natural and healthy adhesiveness. It is a notorious fact that 
when through fear, fascination, or other excitement, an object 
possesses the mind, all other things are unheeded and forgotten. 
The climax of the state is reached in insanity. In ordinary 



DISEASED PERSISTENCY OF IMPRESSIONS. 339 

life we are liable at times to become engrossed with an idea 
presented in circumstances of great excitement, which we are 
unable to dismiss, however much we may desire it. The 
healthy endurance of an impression is always compatible with 
dropping it from the immediate view when other things solicit 
our notice. We acquire ideas to rise up when they are 
wanted, not to haunt us unbidden. It is one of the peculia- 
rities of the nervous system, and of all the other tissues, to 
suffer themselves to run into a wasting excitement, which 
leaves the organs weaker, and requires to be made up for by 
more than ordinary repose. The flow of nervous action during 
the excitement of the ear by music or the voice in speech, 
when pushed to a certain point, runs into the state of diseased 
overflow, and the mind is not calmed down until some con- 
siderable interval has elapsed. A constitution liable to run into 
this condition is : nervous/ in the sense implying weakness, and 
not vigour of nerves. A vigorous sj'stem is one that can 
endure a great amount of excitement, still retaining the power 
of becoming calm and clearing the mind at pleasure. This 
kind of power shows itself in easy self-command. 

Herein lies the objection to the use of severe punishments 
and terror in education ; for although in this way a preter- 
natural attention is forced to some one thing, the mind is 
rendered much less retentive of things on the whole, not to 
speak of the positive suffering inflicted for the sake of the 
object. 

15. The general doctrine now contended for as to the 
seat of revived impressions is not a barren speculation ; if true, 
it bears important practical inferences. In expressing and 
describing thought and the thinking processes, an operation 
of great subtlety essential to our subject, the doctrine is of 
great service ; it helps us in some measure to localize these 
processes, and the language that might otherwise be deemed 
figurative becomes literal. The imagination of visible objects 
is a process of seeing ; the musician's imagination is hearing ; 
the phantasies of the cook and the gourmand tickle the 
palate ; the fear of a whipping actually makes the skin to tingle. 
The identity between actual and revived feelings shortens 

z 2 



340 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

our labour by enabling us to transfer much of our knowledge 
of the one to the other. The properties that we find to hold 
of sensation in the actual, we may after a certain allowance 
ascribe to the ideal. Thus the qualities of the sense of sight 
in any one person, as, for example, its discriminating power, 
would belong likewise to his visual ideas. The senses are in 
this way a key to the mind. Sensation is intellect already in 
act ; it is the mere outward manifestation of the ideal processes. 
When the ear or the eye discriminates, it has already brought 
intelligence to the test. 

This doctrine has, therefore, important bearings upon the 
long-disputed question as to the origin of our ideas in sense. 
So far as it goes it appears unfavourable to the doctrine of 
innate ideas. I do not mean, however, at the present stage, 
to enter into this great controversy, although we have been 
endeavouring, both here and in the previous Book, to pave the 
way for discussing it afterwards. 

] 6. I return now to the association of Feelings of Move- 
ment. It generally happens that if we can perform a move- 
ment actually, we can also perform it mentally. Thus we can go 
through in the mind the different steps of a dance ; in other 
words, the feelings of the successive evolutions have been 
associated as well as the movements themselves. It must not 
be supposed, however, that the adhesion of actual movements 
and that of mental movements run exactly parallel, and that if 
the one is perfect so is the other. We may sometimes see a 
mechanic able to go through the actual steps of a process, but 
unable to go through them in his mind ; the proof being that 
in describing them to another party he often forgets a step, 
and only remembers it by doing the thing. In this case the 
actions are more adhesive than the traces of them. I cannot 
at present produce any instance to show, on the other hand, 
that a series of actions can be repeated mentally and yet not 
bodily ; for as the mental actions are performed in the same 
circles, it usually needs only a volition, often the removal of a 
restraint merely, to bring them to the full length of actuating 
the muscles. But as there is a class of persons whose activity 



ASSOCIATION OF FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT. 341 

ivS chiefly mental, while others come to the actual in most of 
their trains, I can easily suppose instances to arise in the first- 
named class where the mental succession is perfect, while the 
bodily succession would fail if it came to a trial. 

17. The principal field of examples of the association 
of pure feelings of muscular action is the voice. Most other 
cases are so complexed with Sensation that they do not answer 
our present purpose. But in speech we have a series of actions 
fixed in trains by association, and which we can perform either 
actually or mentally at pleasure, the mental action being 
nothing else than a sort of whisper, or approach to a whisper, 
instead of the full-spoken utterance. The child can repeat its 
catechism in a suppressed voice, as well as aloud. We can 
even acquire language mentally or without speaking it out at 
all ; that is to say, we can bring about a mental adhesion by 
itself, or with the bodily action wanting. In language this 
happens continually ; for in reading a book to oneself we do 
not speak the words vocally, whence the articulate adherence 
takes place within the mental circles purely. So children, 
learning their lessons in school, as they do not get them aloud, 
must acquire the verbal successions in the same way. In 
going over the spelling book, they have to articulate the letters 
of each word a number of times, and then the whole word ; 
after a sufficient repetition the train of articulations coheres, 
and the one brings on the next without fail, whether spoken 
inwardly or aloud. 

As a general rule, it is best to rehearse verbal exercises aloud, 
if they are to be performed aloud: just as in the case of other 
mechanical operations. Experience, I think, shows that the 
trains are sooner fixed in this way than in the other. By 
coming to the actual execution we set on a current that is 
both more energetic and larger in its sweep, inasmuch as it 
takes in the full operation of the muscles. In the early school 
acquirements, where everything has to be spoken out to the 
master, the audible repetition is the best ; in after days, when 
we go over a great deal of language merely as thought or the 
silent links of action, the outspeaking is not called for ; it 



342 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

would be an unnecessary waste of time and muscular exer- 
tion.* 

1 8. The circumstances that favour the cohesion of mental 
trains of movement are nearly the same as those already 
detailed for actual movements. A certain repetition is 
requisite ; more or less according as the other circumstances 
are favourable, namely, the natural adhesiveness of the system, 
the concentration of nervous energy, and the spontaneous 
activity. In mere mental acquirement, the condition of bodily 
strength is of course not an essential ; but the natural and 
healthy activity of the organs which arises from central 
vigour cannot be dispensed with. t 

There is such a thing*' as a common character of the active 
organs in the same individual; an activity of temperament 
that shows itself in every kind of exertion, in limbs, voice, 
eyes, and every part moved by muscle, or a sluggish feebleness 
extending alike over every kind of exercise. But this does 
not exclude specific differences of endowment in separate 
members, making the movements of one more adhesive and 
acquisitive than those of others. Thus we may have a special 
development of the cohesiveness of the articulating members, 
the voice, tongue, and mouth, through some special quality in 
the centres that actuate these organs. But, to the best of my 
judgment, if we confine ourselves closely to the active mem- 
bers, there is more usually a common character of adhesiveness 
than any marked inequality ; and I am disposed to trace the 
actual differences to other circumstances, and chiefly to 
differences in the particular senses concerned in the case. I 
know no reason why a good hand and a dexterous foot should 
not generally go together ; and he that can readily acquire a 
flow of words may also acquire a flow of fencing motions or 
dancing postures. What is special to the important case of 
speech will come out as we proceed. 



* In the processes of meditation and thought we are constantly forming 
new combinations, and these we can permanently retain if we have dwelt 
upon them sufficiently long. A speaker meditating an address trusts to 
the adhesiveness of his verbal trains although they have been all the while 
in the state of mere ideas, he not having spoken them aloud. 



343 



SENSATIONS OF THE SAME SENSE. 

19. The next class of associable elements to be considered 
is the Sensations ; and I shall confine myself in the first 
instance to the adhesion of impressions of the same sense, — 
touches with touches, sounds with sounds, &c. There are 
various interesting operations that fall under this head ; it 
embraces the early education of the several senses. 

In the inferior senses, there is not much scope for 
exemplifying the process ; the Organic Feelings do not form 
any striking associations among one another. We might note 
such cases as the expectation of a series of painful feelings 
from the occurrence of some one, as in an attack of illness ; 
but there is no need for dwelling on instances of this 
description. 

Even in Tastes, it is not common to have any important 
associations of one with another. One might easily suppose the 
formation of a train of tastes, such that any one would suggest 
the others, but I hardly know any set of circumstances where 
it occurs in a prominent way. 

So with Smell ; if it so happen that we frequently expe- 
rience a succession of smells of one fixed order, an adhesion 
will be formed between the different impressions, and in con- 
sequence, when one is presented all the rest will be ready to 
arise in order without the actual experience. In passing 
frequently through a garden along the same track we might 
come to acquire a succession of odours, and from any one 
anticipate the next before we actually reach it. 

But as regards both Taste and Smell, we rarely exist in a 
train of recollections of either one or other. They are very 
difficult to realize perfectly, and what we recover chiefly about 
them is the expression and the sentiment of liking or aversion 
that they produced. By a great effort of mind Ave may 
approach very near the recovery of a smell that we have been 
extremely familiar with, as for example the odour of coffee ; 
and if we were more dependent on ideas of smell we might 
perhaps succeed much better; nevertheless, it must be 



344 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

admitted that the recoverability of these states by mere 
mental association is of a very low order. 

20. But this leads me to remark on the effect of repetition 
in making any single impression adherent — in giving us a 
firm hold of it, so as to make it endurable and recoverable. 
The single taste of sugar by repetition impresses the mind 
more and more, and by this circumstance becomes gradually 
easier to retain in idea. The smell of a rose, in like manner, 
after a thousand repetitions comes much nearer to an inde- 
pendent ideal persistence than after twenty repetitions. So 
it is with all the senses, high and low. Apart altogether from 
the association of two or more distinct sensations in a group 
or in a train, there is a fixing process going on with every 
individual sensation, rendering it more easy to retain when 
the original has passed away, and more vivid when by means 
of association it is afterwards reproduced. This is one great 
part of the education of the senses. The simplest impression 
that can be made, of Taste, Smell, Touch, Hearing, Sight, 
needs repetition in order to endure of its own accord ; even in 
the most persistent sense, the sense of seeing, the impressions 
on the infant mind that do not stir a strong feeling will vanish 
as soon as the eye is turned some other way. 

21. We pass on to the more intellectual senses, Touch, 
Hearing, and Sight. 

In Touch we have various classes of Sensations ; the more 
purely emotional, as soft contacts and pungent contacts, and 
those entering into intellectual perceptions, as the feelings of 
roughness, weight, elasticity, size, &c. In all these there is 
room for the associating principle to operate, but our present 
illustration will keep in view chiefly the second of the two 
classes, or that concerned in the development of the Intellect. 
The full consideration of such sensations as have the emotional 
element predominating must be entered on apart. 

The sensation of any one surface, with all its asperities, is a 
complex thing ; it is an aggregate of impressions made on the 
skin, and having a certain arrangement and intensity. The 
face of a brush yields a number of impressions all occurring 
together, which require to cohere in order that the sensation 



■ 



COHERENCE OF SENSATIONS OF TOUCH. 345 

in its entireness may survive the actual contact. They must 
preserve their coexistence and return en masse at an after 
time. In comparing one surface with another, as in choosing 
a tooth brush, it is necessary only that a complex impression 
of one should survive a few seconds while the other is felt ; 
in comparing one with some other long since worn out, the 
permanence behoves to be much greater. So with surfaces of 
cloth or wood, or stone or metal, judged of by their asperity ; 
an associating process must fuse the multiplex impression 
before it can endure when the original is gone. Some surfaces 
are distinguished by an aggregate of asperity and temperature, 
as the cold touch of a stone or a lump of metal, in which case 
the feeling of cold must cohere along with the other parts of 
the tactual impression. 

When muscular feelings and exertions are superadded to 
the impressions made on the skin, we obtain the more com- 
plex notions of touch, — those that combine feelings of size, 
shape, and situation with texture or surface. Here an adhe- 
sion needs to take place between the tactile and mobile 
impressions. In order that a workman may recognise his tool 
by the hand alone, he must have had a frequent experience of 
the complex feeling that characterizes its contact — the tactile 
impression of rough or smooth, cold or warm — with the muscular 
impression of weight, size, and shape, these two last qualities 
being determined by the muscular situation of the hand while 
grasping it. A sufficiency of repetition will so fuse all these 
together, that the tool can be identified the moment it is 
touched. 

In plastic operations, or in dealing with soft viscid matters 
requiring a particular consistency, as dough, clay, mortar, &c, 
it is necessary to acquire firm impressions of different qualities 
and degrees of consistency in order to know when the proper 
point has been exactly reached. This demands the cohesion 
of a complex sensation of touch ; that is, a certain skin feeling 
of clamminess and roughness, with the muscular feeling of 
resistance, will have to cohere into one fixed whole that shall 
never waver, or vary, or be obscured by the concurrence of 
other differing impressions. The repetition requisite for such 



346 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

practical discrimination as plastic operators require is usually 
very great, amounting to hundreds or thousands of contacts. 
Individuals seem to differ exceedingly in their facility of fixing 
standard contacts by adhesive association. This is a case 
where it is impossible to mistake differences of natural cha- 
racter. Some cannot in a whole life acquire the nicety that 
others possess after a few months' experience. The delicacy of 
the skin and of the muscular sensibility must combine in most 
cases of this kind ; but it can be easily seen which of the two 
preponderates. A delicate muscular sensibility will show 
itself in other combinations besides touch, and in other senses ; 
it will appear in the eye, the ear, and the voice. Moreover 
some of the feelings included under touch have scarcely any- 
thing to do with the skin, as for example, weight, size, and 
shape, and a great delicacy of discrimination in these has a 
purely muscular origin ; while in judging of the texture of a 
cloth or the smoothness of a piece of mahogany, the skin 
sensibility is the proper test. 

By touch, therefore, under the operatiou of the cohesive 
principle, we acquire fixed notions corresponding to the im- 
pressions made upon us by the objects that we handle. In 
this way we have a fixed coherent impression of all the articles 
that we are in the custom of handling and moving about in 
our daily life. Thus a workman is familiarised with his tools ; 
and every person comes to know the instruments and furniture 
of their dwellings. But in order to represent to ourselves the 
acquisitions of touch in their highest form, we must refer to 
the experience of the blind, who have no other contact with 
solid and extended bodies excepting this. The impressions of 
sight are so much more enduring and revivable than any 
others, that we hardly ever think of a visible body otherwise 
than as seen by the eye ; a workman desiderating a hammer 
thinks of its appearance to his eye, and not of its contact to 
his hand, although he is quite able to judge of it by this last 
feature. But a blind person must think of objects as felt 
things ; the revived sensation in them is a projection on the 
hands not on the eyes, and they alone are in a position to 
judge what is the natural permanence of skin impressions and 



COHERENCE OF SOUNDS. 347 

how far they can be recovered and lived in when the reality- 
is absent. Their thoughts, reveries, and dreams, are touches, 
not sights. Not only is their power of mere discrimination of 
a very exalted kind, but they attain the higher state of realizing 
past touches as if fully present ; if indeed this realization of 
touch is under any circumstances fully attainable. 

We must refer to the blind also for the association of trains, 
sequences, or succession of touches, made so coherent that any 
one can recal the entire chain. A blind man feeling his way 
along a wall by the hand experiences in succession the different 
contacts ; and these by repetition are so fixed in his mind 
that when he is placed at any one point he anticipates all that 
is to follow. Being under the necessity of threading his way 
through life by touch, he acquires coherent successions of 
feelings of contact, as other men acquire of sights. He knows 
his whereabouts in his room by touch ; the progress of his 
work, if he is engaged in handicraft operation, is measured in 
the same way. 

12. In acquiring associations of Sounds we have to en- 
counter the supplanting tendency of the voice in the most 
interesting instances, namely, articulate and musical sounds. 
For while intently listening to a speech, we are very liable to 
follow the speaker with a sujDpressed articulation of our own, 
whereby we take the train of words into a vocal embrace, as 
well as receive it passively on the sense of hearing. The vocal 
association may thus be the more effective of the two in con- 
stituting our subsequent recollection of what was said. Not- 
withstanding this, there is much more room for exemplifying 
the associating principle in Hearing than in Touch. 

By repetition, as already observed in the other senses, the 
ear becomes formed to individual sounds, so that they remain 
with ease after the cessation of the cause. It always takes 
time to give the proper set and fixity to the nervous currents 
accompanying each separate impression, and this process is as 
much a result of the associating force as the formation of 
chains of impressions. The ear of the child becomes formed 
to the lullaby of the nurse after repetition, or to the particular 
quality of her voice. The multiple impression made by the 



348 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

simplest sound needs an operation of coherence in order to fix 
it, or adapt it for self-subsisting endurance. At first, the 
effect of any sound is dissolved as soon as the sound ceases ; 
it survives neither for comparison, nor identification, nor any 
other purpose. After a time it gets worked into the nerves, 
and these find themselves able to sustain it for a time when 
once set a-going ; the more repetition it gets the more pro-* 
longed is the self-sustaining current ; and in the end it may 
become perfectly easy to keep up for any length of time. At 
this stage it has become a fit subject for being revived by pure 
mental association, or apart from the physical or outward 
cause. Identification and feeling of difference mark the 
lowest stage of coherence, as when the child identifies the 
voice of the mother, and feels other voices to be distinct 
from that one. In Taste and Smell, and even Touch, the 
cohering principle is not often carried farther than to make 
comparisons and note agreements and differences ; the com- 
plete revival of the sensations, so as to live them over again, 
belongs only to the two highest senses, and chiefly to sight. 

The simplest sound is so far a complex impression that it 
needs a plastic operation to fix its parts together. Thus an 
articulate syllable, ma, ba, is a really complex effect ; it gives 
rise to a plurality of nervous currents, and to make all these 
flow together in company and order demands a certain length 
of repetition. This is the lowest case of association of sounds. 
The next case is the coherence of trains or successions of 
sound, of which there are abundant examples. A good 
example for illustration is a simple air of music. Here a 
number of sounds follow one another in a fixed order, and by 
frequently hearing them we learn to pass from the one to the 
other by ideal anticipation. The mental currents for one note 
fuse themselves into the next, and the one brings the other 
on by virtue of this acquired coherence. A musical ear can 
revive sounds in this manner so perfectly as to enjoy the 
original over again with only a slight abatement of the keen- 
ness. But hardly any quality of the human constitution is 
so much subject to differences of degree as the associating 
force of the circles of hearing. Whether sounds shall cohere 



TRAINS AND AGGREGATES OF RIGHT. 349 

readily or with difficulty seems to depend far more upon the 
local peculiarity of the region of the ear than upon the quality 
of the brain in general. Moreover the rule is totally different 
for musical and articulate sounds ; the one requires the nerves 
to be very susceptible to the quality of pitch, the other to 
articulate differences, these having nothing to do with pitch. 
There is a third quality of sounds, namely, cadence or accent 
in spoken language, distinct from either of those, and appealing 
to a distinctive susceptibility. This last quality I imagine to 
be related to the muscular sensibility of the ear. These three 
properties are the bases of three different susceptibilities, — 
music, languages, oratorical effect. Although previous to prac- 
tice the ear can distinguish nothing, yet some ears are so con- 
stituted as to fall very soon into one line of discrimination, as 
the musical or the oratorical, while they come very slowly 
into another. All other things being the same, the length of 
repetition requisite measures the obtuseness, slowness, or de- 
fective plasticity of the ear and its connected circles. "We call 
an ear quick that needs few repetitions. 

In acquiring words and sentences, it is difficult to separate 
the action of the voice (which is true also in some degree of 
music), and therefore I do not discuss at this stage the whole 
class of lingual acquirements. But the adhesiveness of the 
ear for sounds possessing the articulate properties is one of 
the elements of the case. 

33. Cohering trains and aggregates of the Sensations of 
Sight make, more than any other thing, perhaps more than 
all other things put together, the material of thought, me- 
mory, and imagination. The vocal trains of articulate speech 
are next in importance as furnishing the matter of the intel- 
lectual operations. That process of employing one sense as a 
substitute for others, avails itself principally of vision, the 
most retentive of them all. Thus it is that objects thought 
of on account of their taste or smell, are actually conceived 
under their visual aspect. The image of a rose dwells in the 
mind as a visual picture, and in a very inferior degree as a 
perpetuated impi'ession of a sweet odour. 

Sensations of sight, as we have seen, are compounded of 



350 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

visual spectra and muscular feelings. A visible picture is, in 
fact, a train of rapid movements of the eyes, hither and 
thither, over luminous points, lines, and surfaces. 

The education of the eye goes through all the stages 
described for the other senses. There is first a fixed set or 
familiarity with certain Colours, the result of repetition, en- 
abling their impression to endure in the absence of the 
original, and to exist at any time of their own accord when 
once suggested. On this is based the power of discrimination 
of colours and shades of colour, with sense of difference and 
agreement, which we have noted, again and again, as the first 
and lowest consequence of the mental persistence of sensa- 
tions. But in the eye, sooner than in any other sense, are 
these various effects accomplished. The optical impressions, 
from the outset, more readily sustain themselves in the circles 
of the eye and the brain than the impressions of touch, 
smell, or taste. The impact of light is apparently a fine and 
gentle influence upon the nerve, which may be kept up with 
the lowest expenditure; and the currents originated by it 
are more liable to be prolonged than in the other senses. 
Hearing is a more delicate contact than touch, while touch 
itself is less rude than the concussion of nerve caused by a 
sapid body on the tongue ; but light gives the most delicate 
impulse of all, and yet that impulse can sustain itself, and 
produce very keen emotion. These qualities impart to the 
sense of sight its distinguished place among the organs that 
connect us with the outer world. 

The influence that gives the optical currents a facility 
in being induced and continued, so as to make one colour, 
as green, an object of comparison with other colours, is doubt- 
less the same plastic power that forms aggregates of coloured 
expanse, connecting together a succession of tints, as a rain- 
bow, or an optic spectrum. By passing repeatedly through 
the successive colours, the impression of one comes to induce 
the next, and that the following, and so on in order. But 
we can scarcely advance a step in this illustration without 
bringing in the movements of the eye, and the feelings be- 
longing thereto. I can suppose a case where the eyes, in a 



COHERENCE OF OPTICAL AND MUSCULAR IMPRESSIONS. 351 

state of rest, have before them a number of colours produced 
in a fixed succession, flash after flash — red, orange, green, 
blue, violet, white, black, &c. — in which case a train of pure 
optical impressions would become fixed in the mind, and the 
occurrence of the first would tend to revive an image of the 
second, third, &c, on to the last. The gradations of daylight 
and darkness are associated in this way. But in the ordinary 
case of associated colours, they exist side by side, as the 
colours of the landscape, and here we move the eyes to see 
them, and thereby incorporate the act and feeling of Move- 
ment with the sensations of light. If the eye is in this way 
habituated to a train of colours, the habituation consists in 
this, that with each colour are associated both a movement of 
the eye and a second colour, and with this last movement and 
colour are connected a third movement and a new colour, and 
so on to the limit of the picture. If we suppose, for example, a 
chain of fields of different length and varying tints ; the eye 
first sweeps over a yellow corn field, then passes to a grass 
field of double the length, then to a plantation of wood still 
longer; the image of the first is an impression of yellow 
accompanied with a definite sweep of the eye, and a cor- 
responding continuance of the yellow impression ; the image 
of the second is a green effect, doubly prolonged, or accom- 
panied with a double sweep of the eye, or the head, or both; 
the third image is a different tint of green, imbedded in a 
still wider muscular sweep. In these circumstances, and after 
due repetition, if the eye is possessed of the proper yellow 
hue along with the definite movement of the eye accompa- 
nying it, the image of the first field will be reinstated, and 
the mental movement set, as it were, in an old and accus- 
tomed groove, and there will be a transition from the optical 
impression of yellow and a given expanse, to the optical im- 
pression of a shade of green with a double movement, and, 
lastly, to another shade of green with a still greater move- 
ment. These impressions will be reinduced one after another 
upon the cerebral regions where sensations of sight go their 
rounds, by the force of the adhesive or transition force of 
contiguity. 



352 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

Let us pass from this general illustration to some more 
specific and typical cases. In order to exemplify the class of 
Outline Forms, we will suppose a ring or a circle. Here we 
have a line of light and a round sweep of the eye concurring 
in one impression. The eye following the ring is receiving a 
continuous impression of light while performing a round move- 
ment; an optical and a muscular impression are conjoined in 
the effect, the muscular predominating ; for the colour of the 
circumference is supposed merely sufficient to give the lead to 
the ocular movement. The fixing of the impression depends 
almost exclusively on the durability of muscular impressions 
in the muscles of the eye, and in the various circumstances 
that favour the cohesion in this instance. This case of the 
ring typifies a large class of forms employed in various pur- 
poses ; including all the figures or diagrams of Geometry, the 
letters of written language, the cyphers or symbols of Algebra, 
Chemistry, and other sciences, the diagrams and plans of 
Builders, Engineers, and others. In all these cases the en- 
durance of the object is a muscular effect, measured and deter- 
mined by the muscular persistence or tenacity be]onging to 
the moving apparatus of the eye. 

To specify the precise organs whence the different kinds 
of talent and acquirement take their rise, is one of the most 
interesting and curious of the aims of mental science. We will 
dwell a little longer on this case of the engraining of simple 
forms and outlines. The cohesive effect of course depends in 
a great measure on the amount of repetition, but it is always 
important for us to note what those other circumstances are 
that render a less amount of repetition necessary,, or, in other 
words, quicken the pace of the acquirement. Now of the 
innate qualities that hasten the plastic operation, I am dis- 
posed to single out two as the chief, or to divide the action 
into two stages. The one condition is the natural adhesive- 
ness of the muscular impressions in the body in general and 
of the eye in particular ; the other is the tendency to con- 
centrate cerebral power upon a particular subject. I hold that 
there are good grounds for this distinction, and indeed that it 
is quite necessary in order to account for the differences that 



RETENTION OF VISIBLE FORMS. 353 

we find among individuals as respects the acquisition of 
forms. 

That there is a real difference of natural adhesiveness in 
different constitutions I assume as a decided fact ; nothing 
less beinw able to account for the enormous differences observ- 
able in the acquirements of persons similarly situated. In the 
present instance, the adhesiveness is principally muscular, and 
located in the eye. I do not say that it is a quality of the 
muscles purely ; it belongs rather to the entire circles of nerve 
concerned in the movements of vision. Some persons can 
with more ease than others retain the impression of a muscular 
sweep of any kind, a circle, a square, an alphabet, an expanse, 
a building ; fewer repetitions are necessary in order to make 
it self-existent to a certain pitch of vividness. Without any 
special concentration of mind, there is an unequal facility in 
maintaining the ideas of figure and outline. 

With respect to the second point, namely, the differences 
of cerebral or mental concentration, we may illustrate it thus. 
There are three distinct classes of outline forms that would be 
all equally retainable so far as concerns the visual circles, but 
are nevertheless very differently retained in different con- 
stitutions. The muscular sensibility ought to be equally 
impressed with all kinds of form, seeing that it is the same 
effect in all ; but in reality we find that taking minds in 
general this is not so ; the same mind is not equally retentive 
of the forms of Euclid and the forms of an artistic design J 
a difference that must be explained by some circumstance 
deeper than the circles of vision. The three kinds of figure 
that I allude to are, symmetrical or mathematical forms, 
artistic forms, and arbitrary or neutral forms, as the characters 
of an alphabet, or the chance shapes of irregular objects. To 
make the brain peculiarly susceptible to some one of these 
kinds of form, there is wanted a special concentration of 
energy over and above the natural adhesiveness of the circles 
of vision. This concentration is due to some special attraction 
there is for one particular species in consequence of the 
secondary character belonging to it ; in the case of Artistic 
forms it is the feeling of artistic effect powerfully manifested 

A A 



354 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

that arrests and concentrates the attention, a feeling not 
lodged in the eye, but in the mind at large. In the case of 
Geometrical forms, there is also a secondary or additional 
susceptibility springing from the depths of the mind and con- 
centrating nervous energy upon them. What this suscepti- 
bility is there may be some difficulty in deciding. I am dis- 
posed to look upon it as the feeling that some minds have 
towards what is generalized and comprehensive — an intensity 
of regard drawn out by the concentration of meaning con- 
tained in the object. A circle viewed geometrically represents 
all the round forms in nature, and in it we may ascertain 
truths applicable to every one of these ; and when the mind is 
of the kind strongly disposed towards truth and certainty, and 
naturally capable of being intensely concentrated, geometric 
forms ought naturally to arrest it. The hold that one must 
take of these figures is far more intense and severe than in 
any other class of forms ; every line and every angle must be 
rigorously held up before the view. The nice degrees of cur- 
vature are not so necessary to retain as the lines and angles, 
these being the two elements that determine mathematical truth. 
As regards forms that belong neither to Art nor to Science, 
and possess not the fascination of beauty or the interest of 
comprehensive truth, we must depend principally, I apprehend, 
upon the unheightened plasticity of the optic circles. Written 
language and arbitrary symbols in general are examples of 
this class. The power of remembering a great multitude of 
arbitrary marks appears to me to show the intrinsic adhesive- 
ness of the muscular sense in the eye. The acquiring of the 
Chinese written language, with its many thousand characters, 
is perhaps the highest effort of this nature that could be fixed 
upon. When the forms are few and important, as the letters 
of Algebra, or the symbols of Chemistry, they will be seized 
by the mathematical mind, but when they are innumerable in 
amount, and not individually of stirring importance, they can 
be imbibed only by high natural or disinterested adhesiveness. 
This contrast of the intensive and the extensive expresses in a 
general way the difference of the man of science from the 
scholar ; artistic considerations being equally foreign to both. 



PICTORIAL ADHESION. 355 

The retention of a map or a complex plan belongs to the 
scholarly and not the scientific memory. I do not deny the 
existence of an additional stimulus of the nature of a scholarly 
interest in the end and purpose of maps and languages, but I 
do not think that this occurs so manifestly to heighten the 
plastic adhesion as happens in the two other cases. 

24. In the foregoing discussion, I have treated the luminous 
effect of the objects as nothing in the account. The next class 
of examples are those where light, colour, and shade are a 
material part of the impression, as in a landscape, a spectacle, 
a picture, a room, a human face. Here the object consists of 
an aggregate of masses of colour, which are associated by 
whatever force of retentiveness and adhesion belongs to the 
impressions of colour. By repeatedly gazing at a picture, its 
different patches of colour seize hold of the mind and connect 
themselves in their natural order, so that the one can recal the 
rest, and the whole can exist and be held in the view when 
the actual object is no longer present. The masses of coloured 
decoration seen in theatres, the colours of rich calicoes, and 
the variegated dresses of an assembly of people, exemplify the 
cases where colour predominates over form, and where the 
retentiveness is much more optical than muscular. The im- 
pressibility to colour is put to the test by the attempt to recal 
objects like these. The geometrician needs no such faculty. 
A natural persistence in the currents of luminous action, and a 
rapidity in acquiring the transitions that fix one to another at 
its side, which make but one and the same quality of the 
optical circles, are shown when the visible world, not in out- 
line but in picture, is easily retained in idea. This attribute 
has no necessary connexion with the muscular susceptibility ; 
the two follow different laws, and belong to independent organs. 
In some people we find the luminous susceptibility powerful 
and pre-eminent ; such persons have one of the gifts of a 
pictorial artist. The easy recollection and revival of scenes 
and objects and human faces are necessary in order to work as 
a combiner in this kind of material. 

25. The same distinction as that above drawn, may be 
made between a natural or disinterested adhesiveness (always 

A A 2 



356 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

the best), and an adhesiveness stimulated by a flow of cerebral 
power in consequence of excitement kindled by the object. 
An artistic sense may operate here as well as in forms ; and if 
so, the pictures retained will be in preference those that rouse 
an artistic feeling. A natural impressibility to light will show 
itself in things that are indifferent to any deeper sense ; as in 
recollecting the succession of houses and shops in a street, of 
the dresses of a company, of the features of an indifferent 
landscape, and of visible coloured objects in general, whether 
they have interest or not. This kind of susceptibility must be 
very great in such a mind as that of Dickens, who revels in 
the description of mere surface, creating interest out of the 
mere act of describing, as a painter makes an indifferent object 
pleasing by the display of imitative power. The remembrance 
that some people have of the minute particulars of a room 
where they have been for a short time, its furniture, walls, 
decorations, and details, implies, in the first instance, a natural 
retentiveness to visible effect, and particularly colour. This 
original susceptibility may be heightened by the habit of 
attending to such things and by the interest attaching to them, 
but these would not suffice of themselves, nor probably would 
they exist without the primitive quality. For it is a fact, 
that the discovery of aesthetic effects in coloured scenes usually 
accompanies the natural susceptibility to colour. Minds 
furnished with a large store of visible pictures as a consequence 
of their retentive faculty, are apt to become artists ; as may be 
seen from the whole class of poets and writers of romance. 

26. There is necessarily a process of successive growth in 
the Sensations of the eye, or in the pictorial impressions 
derived through its instrumentality. We acquire first the 
mere discriminative retentiveness of simple colours and out- 
lines ; we can say if the object now in the hand recals a 
former impression of the same nature, or if it be different from 
any given past impression. We pass from this on to pictorial 
retentiveness ; the full realization of the object as an idea 
existing by its own power. This ideal conception begins with 
simple forms and slightly varied colours, before taking in the 
more complex appearances. A ring, a ball, a spoon, a dish, a 



CONDITIONS OF VISUAL ADHESION. 357 

table, a door, a window, are among the more elementary and 
easy objects ; they imply a few simple motions and turns of 
the eye, and ai*e mostly uniform in colour. These may all be 
conceived at an early period, and before a face or a human 
figure can be surveyed sufficiently often to hold its many 
phases in one cohesive embrace. I can easily suppose that it 
takes several years ere the retentiveness of visible aggregates 
is grown to the pitch of holding easily the whole picture of a 
human person, especially if we take an individual only once 
seen. But the differences of susceptibility and of cultivation 
on this point are enormous : not to speak of the element of 
human interest that assists us so much in forming a cohering 
picture of this particular subject. 

It must never be forgotten that the inward operations for 
holding a remembered or ideal picture in the view are the 
very same as the actual examination of the original. They con- 
sist in movements hither and thither of the eyes (these move- 
ments not often actually executed), resting occasionally on 
single points, while the rest drops out of view, then passing to 
other points, now making a wide sweep over the whole, at 
another time inspecting narrowly the parts. The movements 
and colour are fused in oue complex impression ; this fusion is 
one of the effects of the associating power : and thus the two 
mutually sustain and revive each other. 

27. To sum up the circumstances that affect the adhesive 
growth of visible images. Distinguishing between the mecha- 
nical and the optical elements of the eye, we note a different 
law for each, inasmuch as they spring from independent por- 
tions of our framework; the one following the rule for mecha- 
nical ideas generally, the other being special as regards the 
susceptibility of the eye to light and the natural retainability 
of the impressions of light and colour. We then remark that, 
time or repetition being in all cases necessary, the process is 
shorter in some minds by virtue of the primitive adhesiveness 
of the nervous system, in others by the flow of cerebral 
energy determined by the exciting character of the subject, 
as when artistic forms are impressed under the artistic sensi- 
bility. These are permanent causes ; being always at work if 



S58 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 






they exist at all. The more temporary influences are those 
mentioned already in speaking of the growth of Movements; 
namely, the fresh and healthy condition of the organs; the 
freedom from distracting excitements and depressing passions* 
and any stimulants that may be occasionally applied to the 
attention, as the force of sympathy, an appetite or passion, 
some purpose or end in view. Lastly, we should advert to 
the vividness and clearness of the original objects, as when a 
country is seen under a strong sun-light, or when a picture is 
forcibly and distinctly painted. Feebleness, haziness, or in- 
distinctness in any sensible impression whatever, necessarily 
weakens the stimulus given to the sensorial circles, and makes 
them so much the less adherent. 

28. Constant allusion has been made to the superior reten- 
tiveness of the traces of the sensations of sight. This per- 
manency is the life of the intellect ; for although intellectual 
forms would exist apart from luminous impressions, yet the 
superiority of this one sense represses the growth of the others, 
and causes it to monopolize the office of representing the outer 
world in the mind. 

If we look for a few moments at a strong light, and then 
shut the eyes, the light still remains, the excited retina keeps 
up the currents of visibility in the brain, and produces for a 
time nearly all the effects of the original object. Newton made 
an experiment of gazing at the sun, until the solar image 
took possession of his eyes, and sustained itself for several 
weeks against his will. The overpowering strength of the im- 
pression in this case produced a diseased persistency. A similar 
persistency is often caused by intense emotions, such as terror ; 
a fright will make an object haunt a person for a length of 
time. Intense affections have a like influence in sustaining 
the ideal presence of their subject. 

In ordinary circumstances, and in ordinary minds, an idea 
falls short of the sensation ; the recalled picture drops out much 
of the original, and presents itself under feebler lights : but in 
vision less is missed than in the other senses. The vividness and 
the ease of an actual view can rarely exist ; but under an average 
impulse, form, outline, and parts can be recovered when the 



MOVEMENTS ASSOCIATED WITH SENSATIONS. 359 

muscular grasp is good, and the fulness of colour when the 
optical adhesiveness is of a high order. The highest pictorial 
intellects may probably approach very closely to the facility 
and fulness of the real presence. 

The recovery of past images is one of the commonest 
efforts of Volition. In this case the effort must direct itself 
towards the muscles of the eye, and these will imitate or recal 
the movements entering into the picture. If it is a building 
the muscles will ideally trace out the form, and give an op- 
portunity to the imbedded luminous impressions to recover 
themselves. The more easily we can repeat some of the 
movements of the original view, the more likely we are to 
draw all the rest in their train, and, with the movements, the 
lights, shadows, colours, and all the minute imagery that 
makes up the detail of the building. 

SENSATIONS OF DIFFERENT SENSES. 

The concurrence of Sensations in one common stream of 
consciousness, — in the same cerebral highway, — enables those 
of different senses to be associated as readily as the sensations 
of the same sense. We will now therefore review the more 
remarkable instances that arise out of this concurrence, and 
in so doing it will be convenient to include Movements and 
their ideas along with Sensations. 

39. Movements with Sensations. — Under this title I would 
cite the association of actions with sensible signs, as in all that 
department of lingual acquisition wherein names have the 
meaning of command, direction, guidance, control. Every 
movement • that we make is connected with a certain form of 
words or a particular signal, for the purpose of setting it on 
at any time. The child learns to connect vocal sounds with 
its various actions, and thus becomes amenable to command 
and direction. This education is continued all through life, 
and the signs for indicating action may be varied without end. 
The notes of the bugle, the signals at sea, the directions posted 
up on the walls, have all this acquired power of commanding 
movements. The same association enters into the education of 



360 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

animals ; the horse and the dog soon learn to connect specific 
actions with the language, tones, and looks of human beings. 
Long before children possess the power of utterance them- 
selves, many of their actions are associated with the sounds 
of language as uttered by others. 

30. Muscular Ideas with Sensations. — The enduring- 
forms, impressions, or ideas of movement, are associated with 
sensations, and the two things are in the habit of recalling 
each other. In the three higher senses we have seen that 
there is an association of these two elements ; many tactile, 
audible, and visible sensations being a coalition of the two. 
There are instances, however, besides these. The most inte- 
resting that occurs to me is a case coming under Sight. We 
come to connect the visible appearances of objects with their 
weight, hardness, and tenacity, — qualities purely muscular in 
their perception. Having experience of the weight of a piece 
of stone of a certain appearance, we associate the appearance 
with the weight, and the one comes to recal the other ; so 
with hardness or tenacity. In this way we have an associated 
connexion between substances and their uses founded on 
these properties. We acquire a strong feeling of the dif- 
ference between timber and stone, and between stone and 
metal, so much so that we demand each to be differently 
applied in all kinds of erections and mechanical operations. 
It has been remarked that our sense of Architectural propor- 
tions is founded on our experience of stone, and would require 
to be readjusted if iron were as universally employed. If the 
specific gravity of the rocky materials of the globe had been 
equal to lead instead of being about two and half times water, 
our sense of the weight of every piece of stone would have 
been four times as great as at present, and we should con- 
sequently have demanded for the satisfaction of the eye far 
more massive proportions in every kind of stone-work.* 



* That is, supposing there was no increased tenacity or power to resist 
crushing at the same time. Iron buildings are less massive than stone, 
notwithstanding the greater density of the material ; but in that case the 
greater strength of the substance comes into play, and the employment of 
hollow and slender forms takes off from the weight to be supported. 



SENSATIONS ASSOCIATED WITH SENSATIONS. 361 

31. Sensations with Sensations. — Under this head I 
might allude to all the combinations that would arise by 
taking each sense along with every other ; organic sensations 
with tastes and smells, with touches, sounds, and sights ; 
tastes with smells, &c, smells with touches, and so on. But 
any reader may supply for himself examples of all these cases. 
I shall merely touch on the associations among the three 
higher senses. 

Touches are associated with Sounds, when the ring of a 
body suggests how it would feel, as in discriminating stone, 
wood, glass, pottery, &c. This is a very abundant and gene- 
rally very secure adhesion. The discrimination and delicacy 
of the sense of hearing makes it thus a valuable means of 
knowing what is going on around us. 

Touches are associated with Sights in the great compre- 
hensive case of connecting the tactile properties of things with 
their visible appearance, whereby the one can instantly suggest 
the other. We associate the tangible qualities of roughness, 
smoothness, solidity, liquidity, viscidity, with the character- 
istic impressions they make on the eye, and we can at any 
time recal the touch by the sight, or the sight by the touch. 
So we can distinguish metallic, wooden, or rocky surfaces, 
cloths, leaves, flowers, by both senses ; and by association the 
impression on the one can bring up the other. Every one has 
a large amount of knowledge existing in the shape of asso- 
ciated touches and sights. We connect likewise the form as 
revealed to touch with the seen form, and thus make the 
one confirm the other. Our notion of figure is in fact a 
coalition of different impressions, and this gives to it a more 
perfect character than any single impression can convey. I 
shall speak of this again presently. 

Sounds are associated with Sights in innumerable in- 
stances. We connect the visible appearances of bodies with 
the noise they make when struck, as a glass, a spoon, a book, 
a hat. We associate an instrument of music with the peculiar 
quality of its note ; we connect animals with their vocal 
utterance. So with human beings ; every person known to 
us having a distinctive voice. In acquiring languages we 



362 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

have to associate the articulate sound with the alphabetical 
letters. 

32. In this case and in all the other cases of heterogeneous 
association, I am disposed to think that the rapidity of the 
adhesion will vary with the adhesive quality of each of the 
two senses entering into the combination. Thus, when sounds 
are connected with sights, the goodness of the ear and the 
retentiveness of the eye will both contribute to make 
the adhesion quick and sure. Whence all associations with 
sight would come sooner to maturity than "the connexions 
formed among the inferior sensations. This circumstance it is 
that puts sight forward as the representative sense. Things 
that are seen having a more glorious resurrection in the mind 
than any others, we choose to conceive the objects of nature as 
they appear to the eye rather than as they affect the ear or 
the touch. Of all the ways that an orange can strike the 
senses, the visible aspect is by pre-eminence its revived mani- 
festation, in other words, its ' idea.' 

OF EXTERNAL PERCEPTION. — THE MATERIAL WORLD. 

33. The perception and knowledge of the material world 
come through the sensations by their association with one another. 
The manner of attaining to this knowledge, its exact nature and 
the degree of certainty attaching to it, give rise to some of the 
greatest questions of metaphysical philosophy. Two problems 
especially call for notice at this stage. The first is the origin 
of the perceptions we owe to vision, namely, the forms and 
magnitudes of external bodies, and their distances from the 
eye. Ever since these perceptions were affirmed by Berkeley 
to be not original but acquired, they have formed an interest- 
ing subject of demonstration and discussion with metaphysical 
writers. The second question relates to the grounds we have 
for asserting the existence of an external and material world ; 
this question grew out of the other both historically and 
naturally, and was one of the prominent metaphysical questions 
of the eighteenth century. 



D1PRESSI0NS DUE TO THE EYE ALONE. S63 

34. Of the Perception of the Distances and Magnitudes 
of External Bodies. — In speaking of the sensations of vision 
we have adverted to the qualities of Colour, Form, and Solid 
Dimension, of which the eye gives us feelings or impressions. 
It is to be seen how far these last, together with distance and 
magnitude, are original and proper to the eye, and how far the 
result of a fusion of eye sensations with other feelings. 

The distinctive impressibility of the eye is for Colour. 
This is the effect specific to it as a sense. But the feeling of 
Colour by itself implies no knowledge of any outward object 
as a cause or a thing wherein the colour inheres. It is simply a 
mental effect or influence, an emotion or conscious state, which 
we should be able to distinguish from other conscious states, as 
for example, a smell or a sound. We should also feel the 
difference between it and others of the same kind more or less 
vivid, more or less enduring, more or less expansive or volu- 
minous. So we should distinguish the qualitative differences 
between one colour and another. Emotional effect, with 
discrimination in quality, intensity, duration, and volume, 
would attach to the mere sensation of colour. Knowledge or 
belief in an external or material coloured body there would 
be none. 

But when we add the active or muscular sensibility of the 
eye, we obtain new products. The sweep of the eye over the 
coloured field gives a feeling of a definite amount of action, an 
exercise of internal power which is something totally different 
from the passive emotion of light. This action has many 
various modes, all of the same quality, but all distinctively 
felt and recognised by us. Thus the movements may be in 
any direction — horizontal, vertical, or slanting; and every one 
of these movements is felt as different from every other. In 
addition to these we have the movements of adjustment of 
the eye brought on by differences in the remoteness of 
objects. We have distinctive feelings belonging to these 
different adjustments, just as we have towards the different 
movements across the field of view. If the eyes are adjusted 
first to clear vision for an object six inches from the eye, and 



364 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

afterwards change their adjustment to suit an object six feet 
distant, we are distinctly conscious of the change, and of the 
degree or amount of it ; we know that the change is greater 
than in extending the adjustment to a three-feet object, while 
it is less than we should have to go through for a twenty-feet 
object. Thus in the alterations of the eyes for near and far, 
we have a distinctive consciousness of amount or degree, no 
less than in the movements for right and left, up and down. 
Feelings of the same nature as active exertion in any part of 
the body gives rise to, are thus incorporated with the sensibility 
to colour ; the luminous impression is associated with action 
on our part, and is no longer a purely passive state. We find 
that the light changes as our action changes, we recognise in 
it a certain connexion with our movements ; an association 
springs up between the passive emotion and the active energy 
of the visible organ, or rather with the body generally ; for 
the changes of view are owinsr as much to movements of the 
head and trunk as to the sweep of the eye within its own 
orbit. 

We have not yet attained to the perception or knowledge of 
any outward thing as the source of colour, and the occasion of 
the varying movements and adjustments of the eyes. We have 
discriminating feelings of colour, the discriminative sense of 
active energies, and the association of the two in one fact, but 
nothing to reveal or suggest external things ; we have merely 
the means of comparing a number of various mental states. 
Nor do I see how with the eye alone we can ever pass from 
the internal consciousness to the external perception, to the 
recognition, knowledge, and belief of things out of or apart 
from ourselves, the causes of those internal states. Many have 
contended for, and many more assumed, this power as attach- 
ing to vision. But in so doing they seem to me to have 
fallen into a confusion of idea respecting the mental nature of 
this perception of an outer world, as I shall now endeavour to 
explain. 

3$. It is I believe admitted on all hands that the recogni- 
tion of an outer world apart from self is mixed up with the 
perception of such qualities as extension, form, and remoteness, 



DISTANCE IMPLIES LOCOMOTIVE EFFORT. 365 

called Primary qualities of matter. Heat, odour, taste, colour 
alone, do not suggest external and independent objects, being 
for this reason termed the Secondary qualities of bodies. I 
shall fasten, therefore, on the two facts of remoteness and 
extension, both which imply outward existence in so far as we 
recognise and believe in the reality of a material world apart 
from the mind. With regard to those two qualities, — the 
distance of a thing from the seeing eye and the dimensions of 
a body in space, I affirm that they cannot be perceived 
through the medium of sight alone. 

Take first the case of Distance or remoteness. It appears 
to me that the very meaning of this quality, — the full import 
of the fact implied in it, — is such as cannot be taken in by 
mere sight. For what do we mean when we say that an 
object is four yards distant from where we stand ? I imagine 
that among other things we understand this, namely, that it 
would take a certain number of paces to come up to it, or to 
reduce the distance from four yards to two yards. The pos- 
sibility of a certain amount of locomotion is implied in the 
very idea of distance. The eye would be distinctly aware of a 
change when the distance was reduced from four yards to two, 
but it has of itself no knowledge of the cause or accompanying 
incidents of that change. These are measured by our other 
activities, and in the case of great distances, by the locomotive 
energy and continuance requisite to pass from the one to the 
other. In the case of objects within reach of the hand, the 
movements of the arm give the measure of distance ; they 
supply the accompanying fact that makes distance something 
more than an unknown visible impression. When we say 
that a thing has been shifted from a position of six inches 
distance from the eye to a position of twelve, we imply that 
with the change of ocular effect there has been another 
change corresponding to a certain definite movement of the 
hand and arm in a forward direction ; and unless by supposing 
this additional action, we have no key whatever to the change 
that has come over our visible impression of the thing in 
question. I say, therefore, that distance cannot be perceived 
by the eye, because the idea of distance by its very nature 



36 6 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

implies feelings and measurements out of the eye, and located 
in the other active organs, — the locomotive and other moving 
members. If our notion of distance did not reveal to us the 
fact that by so many steps, or by a certain swing of the arm or 
bend of the body, we should make a definite change in the 
appearance of the object, it would not be a notion of distance ; 
there might be an ocular effect, but not a revelation of 
distance. Granting that the eye is very distinctly affected by 
every change in the remoteness of a visible object from six 
inches to a mile, that it recognises a variation of impression 
all through this interval, this would not answer the question, 
how far is the obj ect removed at each step ? I do not see even 
how it could tell which way the thing was moving. The 
actual distance means so many inches, feet, or yards, and of 
these we have no measure by the eye ; indeed they have no 
relevancy as regards the eye ; they concern the locomotive 
and other mechanical movements, but not the movements of 
sight. 

With the active exertion of the body in locomotion we 
have a definite muscular feeling ; we recognise one exertion 
as greater or less than another ; the feeling of a long stride is 
different from a short ; six paces are attended by a different 
consciousness from four. We acquire permanent and revivable 
impressions of these exertions when any one has been often 
repeated, as for example, pacing the length of a room. We 
can compare any new case with this old habitual effort, and 
there results a consciousness of more or less. This I take to 
be our starting point in the feeling of distance traversed, or of 
linear extension in general : this is the source of our percep- 
tion, and the measure and standard of reference when we arrive 
at the same notion by other means. When, along with a 
forward movement, we behold a steadily varying change of 
appearance in the objects before us, we associate the change 
with the locomotive effort, and after many repetitions we 
firmly connect the one with the other. We then know what 
is implied in a certain feeling in the eye, a certain adjustment 
of the lenses and a certain inclination of the axes, of all which 
we are conscious ; we know that these things are connected with 



IMPORT OF DISTANCE AND EXTENSION. 367 

the further experience of a definite locomotive energy needing 
to be expended in order to alter this consciousness to some 
other consciousness. Apart from this association, the eye 
feeling might be recognised as differing from other eye feelings, 
but there would be no other perception in the case. Experi- 
ence connects these differences of ocular adjustment with the 
various exertions of the body at large, and the one can then 
imply and reveal the others. The feeling we have when the 
eyes are parallel and vision distinct is associated with a great 
and prolonged effort of walking, in other words, with a long 
distance. An inclination of the eyes of two degrees, is asso- 
ciated with two paces to bring us up to the nearest limit of 
vision, or with a stretch of some other kind measured in the 
last resort by pacing, or by passing the hand along the object. 
The change from an inclination of 30 to an inclination of 
10°, is associated with a given sweep of the arm carrying 
the hand forward over eight inches and a half. 

36. I maintain therefore that distance from the eye, and 
lineal extent in any direction, means a definite amount of 
bodily movement experienced in connexion with the change 
of visible impression in passing from one point to another. 
If we next attend to the sweep of the eye over the field of 
view, as required by an object extended laterally, we shall 
find in the same manner that this sweep gives a most distinctive 
consciousness, so that a larger sweep can be discriminated from 
a smaller ; but it gives no information besides. It tells of no 
outward thing, so far as I can make out ; certainly it does not 
tell of extension, for this simple reason, that extension means 
a given movement of the body. If I say that a log of wood 
I see before me is six yards long, I mean that it would 
take a certain number of my paces to traverse its length : the 
visual impression of itself cannot mean or imply any fact of 
this kind, until experience has connected the sweep of the eye 
with the sweep of the legs or other moveable parts. 

Accordingly, I hold, as regards extension in general, that 
this is a feeling derived in the first instance from the locomotive 
or moving organs ; that a definite amount of movement of these 
comes to be associated with the sweep and adjustments and 



368 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

other effects of the eye ; and that the notion when full grown 
is a compound of locomotion, touch, and vision, the one im- 
plying and recalling the others. A certain movement of the 
eye, as the sweep over a table, gives us the sense of that 
table's magnitude, when it recals or revives the extent and 
direction of arm movement necessary to compass the length, 
breadth, and height of the table. Previous to this experience 
the sight of the table would be a mere visible effect, differing 
consciously from other visible effects as one stomachic pain 
differs from another, but not suggesting any foreign effect 
whatever. It could not suggest magnitude, because magnitude 
is not magnitude if it do not mean the extent of movement of 
the arms or limbs that would be needed to compass the 
object ; and this can be gained in no other way but by actual 
trial by these very organs. 

37. The conclusion, therefore, is that extension, size, or mag- 
nitude, owes not only its origin but its essential import or mean- 
ing to a combination of different effects associated together 
under the cohesive principle we are now considering. Extension, 
or space, as a quality, has no other origin and no other meaning 
than the association of these different sensitive and motor effects. 
The coalition of sensations of sight and touch with felt motive 
energies explains everything that belongs to our notion of 
extended magnitude or space. This view has both its sup- 
porters and its opponents. Of the opposition, I shall content 
myself with referring to Sir William Hamilton, who expresses 
himself on the subject in the following terms: — ' The opinions 
so generally prevalent, that through touch, or touch and mus- 
cular feeling, or touch and sight, or touch, muscular feeling, 
and sight, — that through these senses exclusively, we are per- 
cipient of extension, &c, I do not admit. On the contrary, I 
hold that all sensations whatsoever, of which we are conscious, 
as one out of another, eo ipso, afford us the condition of im- 
mediately and necessarily apprehending extension ; for in the 
consciousness itself of such reciprocal outness is actually 
involved a perception of difference of place in space, and, 
consequently, of the extended/ — Dissertations on Reid, 
p. 861. The statement here made that all sensations, of which 



NOTION OF EXTENDED MATTER. 369 

we are conscious as one out of another, afford a condition ot 
apprehending extension, seems to me to imply and take for 
granted the point in dispute : for I do not see how one sensa- 
tion can be felt as out of another, without already supposing 
that we have a feeling of space. If I see two distinct objects 
before me, as two candle flames, I apprehend them as different 
objects, and as distant from one another by an interval of 
space ; but this apprehension presupposes an independent 
experience and knowledge of lineal extension. There is no 
evidence to show that at the first sight of these objects, and 
before any association is formed between visible appearances 
and other movements, that I should be able to apprehend in 
the double appearance a difference of place. I feel a distinct- 
ness of impression, undoubtedly, partly optical and partly 
muscular, but in order that this distinctness may mean to me 
a difference of position in space, it must reveal the additional 
fact, that a certain movement of my arm would carry my hand 
from the one flame to the other, or that some other movement 
of mine would change by a definite amount the appearance 
I now see. If no information is conveyed respecting the 
possibility of movements of the body generally, no idea of space 
is given, for we never consider that we have a notion of space 
unless we distinctly recognise this possibility. But how a 
vision to the eye can reveal beforehand what would be the 
experience of the hand or the other moving members, I am 
unable to see. 

The conjoint experience of the senses and the movements 
appears to me to furnish all that we possess in the notion of 
extended matter. The association between sight and loco- 
motion, or between touch and the movements of the arm, tells 
us that a given appearance implies the possibility of a certain 
movement ; that a remote building implies a certain con- 
tinuance of our walking exertions to change its appearance 
into another that we call a near view; and the power of 
motion, the scope for moving, exhausts every property in the 
idea of space. We estimate it first by our own movements, 
and next by other movements measured in the first instance 
by our own, as, for example, the flight of a bird, the speed of 

B B 



S70 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

a cannon ball, or the movement of light. The mental concep- 
tion that we have of empty space is scope for movement, the 
possibility or potentiality of moving ; and this conception we 
derive from our experience of movements. The resistance to 
movement is our notion of a plenum or occupied space ; the 
extent of movement is our measure of the linear extension of 
body or extended magnitude. No internal revelation, nothing 
in the nature of intuition or innate conception, is required for 
giving us such notions as we actually have of these qualities. 

Perception and Belief of the Material World. 

38. Inasmuch as knowledge and perception inhere in mind 
alone, it has been asked whether there be anything else than 
mind and its activities in the universe ; or what reason have 
we for believing in the existence of counterpart objects apart 
from, and independent of, our sensations. May not waking 
thought be itself a dream ? Or the problem may be illus- 
trated thus : Baron Reichenbach has found a number of 
persons who see sparks and flames issuing from magnets; and 
it is disputed whether these are actual influences emanating 
from the magnetic bars, as much as their colour, lustre, weight, 
hardness, &c, or only phantasies of an excitable imagination. 
Such is the character of the controversy concerning the ex- 
ternal and independent existence of the entire material world.* 
On this question the following remarks are submitted. 

(1.) There is no possible knowledge of the world except in 
reference to our minds. Knowledge means a state of mind ; 
the notion of material things is a mental thing. We are 
incapable of discussing the existence of an independent mate- 



* See in the Letters on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, by 
Samuel Bailey, just published, an able exposure of the equivocations of 
language and confusion of ideas that have clouded the question relating to 
the perception of an external world. I quote a single sentence, giving a 
summary view of the position taken up by Mr Bailey. 'It seems to have 
been only after a thousand struggles that the simple truth was arrived at, 
which is not by any means yet universally received, — the truth that the 
perception of external things through the organs of sense is a direct mental 
act or phenomenon of consciousness not susceptible of being resolved into 
anything else.' — p. ill. 



EXTERNALITY IMPLIES OUR OWN ENERGY. 371 

rial world ; the very act is a contradiction. We can speak 
only of a world presented to our own minds. By an illusion 
of language, we fancy that we are capable of contemplating a 
world which does not enter into our own mental existence ; 
but the attempt belies itself, for this contemplation is an effort 
of mind. 

(2.) Solidity, extension, and space, — the foundation pro- 
perties of the material world, — mean, as has been said above, 
certain movements and energies of our own body, and exist in 
our minds in the shape of feelings of force allied with visible, 
and tactile, and other sensible impressions. The sense of the 
external is the consciousness of particular energies and acti- 
vities of our own. 

If we were the subjects of purely passive sensation, — such 
sensations as warmth, odour, light, — apart from any movement 
of any active member whatever, our recognition of the ex- 
ternal world might be something very different from what we 
now experience. The state of the consciousness would then, 
so far as we are able to imagine it, be of the nature of a dream, 
and our perception of the universe would be sufficiently repre- 
sented by a theory of idealism. 

But in us sensation is never wholly passive, and in general 
is much the reverse. Moreover, the tendency to movement 
exists before the stimulus of sensation ; and movement gives a 
new character to our whole percipient existence. The putting 
forth of energy, and the consciousness of that energy, are distinct 
and characteristic facts totally different in their nature from 
pure sensation ; meaning thereby sensation without activity, 
of which we can form some approximate idea from the ex- 
treme instances occurring to us of impressions languidly 
received. 

It is in this exercise of force that we must look for the 
peculiar feeling of externality of objects, or the distinction 
that we make between what impresses us from without and 
impressions not recognised as outward. Any impression that 
rouses a stroke of energy within us, and that varies exactly 
according as that energy varies, we call an outward impression. 
Dr. Johnson refuted Berkeley, as he thought, by kicking a 

bb2 



372 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 






stone. In fact, this view of Johnson's illustrates the real 
nature of our recognition of externality. It was his own action 
with its consequences, and not the optical impression of a 
stone on the eye, that satisfied him as to the existence of 
something outward. The sum total of all the occasions for 
putting forth active energy, or for conceiving this as possible 
to be put forth, is our external world. 

Taking the order of the senses followed in our exposition 
in the previous book, Touch is the first that decidedly makes 
us cognizant of an external world. But if we were confining 
ourselves to the class of sensations of soft touch, where we 
have the passive pleasure of the sense in highest perfection, 
we should not find much superiority in this sense over smell 
in the matter now under consideration. It is hard contact 
that suggests externality ; and the reason is that in this contact 
we put forth force of our own. The more intense the pressure, 
the more energetic the activity called forth by it. This mixed 
state produced through reacting upon a sensation of touch by 
a muscular exertion, constitutes what is called the sense of 
resistance, a feeling which is the principal foundation of our 
notion of externality. ' There is no feeling of our nature of 
more importance to us, than that of resistance. Of all our 
sensations, it is the most un intermitted ; for, whether we sit, 
or He, or stand, or walk, still the feeling of resistance is present 
to us. Everything we touch at the same time resists ; and 
everything we hear, see, taste, or smell, suggests the idea of 
something that resists. It is through the medium of resistance 
that every act, by which we subject to our use the objects and 
laws of nature, is performed. And, of the complex states of 
consciousness, there is hardly one in which the feeling or idea 
of resistance is not included/* In fact we constantly carry 
about with us the feeling or the notion of resisting, in other 
words, the state where a sensation of touch is coupled with the 
putting forth of effort or force. 

(3.) We experience certain uniformly recurring sensations, 



* Mill's Analysis of the Human Mind, vol. i. p. 47. 



COINCIDENCE OF SENSATIONS WITH MOVEMENTS. 373 

and certain uniform changes in these, when we exert particular 
energies. Thus the visible picture of our dwelling is a per- 
manent and habitual experience, and the variations it is sub- 
ject to, correspond principally to our own conscious movements. 
But at times the appearance is entirely withdrawn, and exists 
only in memory or idea. We then feel the difference between 
the two experiences, the ideal and the actual, and we assign 
some superiority in the mode of existence of the one over the 
other. The superiority we soon find to connect itself with 
the changes due to our movements ; a mere picture or idea 
remains the same whatever be our bodily position or bodily 
exertions ; the sensation that we call the actual is entirely at 
the mercy of our movements, shifting in every possible way 
according- to the varieties of action that we go through. With 
a forward movement the visible impression enlarges, with a 
backward movement it diminishes. A movement of the eye 
shuts it off, another movement restores it. The carriage of 
the head alters it from side to side ; the bending of the body 
varies it in other ways. We are constrained to make a dis- 
tinction between the things that are thus shifted by all our 
movements, and the ideas or dreams that vary of themselves 
while we are still. Even if sensation were only in ourselves, 
we should still have to distinguish between present sensation 
and remembered or revived sensation ; the reference of the 
one to our voluntary movements, and of the other to no such 
modifying causes, would oblige us to note a vital difference in 
the two classes of facts. Such is the uniformity of connexion 
between certain appearances and certain movements, that we 
come to anticipate the one through the other. We know that 
in some one position, as when lying in bed, a movement of 
the limbs will bring us to the sensation of a solid contact in 
the feet ; that another series of movements will bring on a 
particular view to the sight ; that a third movement will bring 
the sound of a bell to the ear, and so forth. We recognise all 
those sensible effects, thus brought uniformly into play by a 
regular series of waking voluntary actions, as totally different 
from our ideas, recollections, and dreams. 

(4.) As our belief in the externality of the causes of our 



374 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

sensations means that certain actions of ours will bring the 
sensations into play or modify them in a known manner, this 
belief is easily furnished to us by experience ; it is no more 
than our experience entitles us to entertain. Having felt 
again and again that a tree becomes larger to the eye as we 
move ; that this movement brings on at last a sensation of 
touch ; that this sensation of touch varies with movements of 
our arm, and a great many other similar coincidences ; the 
repetition of all this experience fixes it in the mind, and from 
the sight alone we can anticipate all the rest. We then know 
that our movements will bring about all the changes and 
sensations above described, and we know no more ; but this 
knowledge is to us the recognition of external existence, the 
only thing, so far as I see, that external existence can possibly 
mean. Belief in external reality is the anticipation of a given 
effect to a given antecedent ; and the effects and causes are 
our own various sensations and movements. 

(5.) When we find that one fixed set of movements brings 
on at the same time sensations of various senses, as when 
approaching to an orchard we have sights and sounds and 
touches and smells and tastes ; the fact very much enhances 
the notion we have of the dependence of sense on action 
or movement, the richness, so to speak, of the external world, 
the value of our action as bringing on sensation. Moreover 
when successive movements bring forward endless varieties of 
new sensations, we are in this way also impressed with 
the abundance of effect brought on as a consequence of our 
own movements. We see the largeness of the possible world 
as compared with the appearance that self makes, — the 
expanse of our own body, — which is to us a unit of comparison 
and standard of reference. Whether the causes of appearances 
are external to our mind or not, we are at all events certain 
that they are external to our bodies ; for between the world 
and each one's corporeal presence a comparison is possible ; 
between the world and mind there is no comparison, the 
things are not homogeneous. We incur the absurdity of 
converting mind into a substance to be viewed by another 
mind, when we speak of our perceiving faculty as an extended 



THE EXPERIENCE OF MANKIND GENERALIZED. 375 

thing. But a world extending beyond our own person we can 
understand ; it implies that the movement that traverses the 
body must be many times multiplied to traverse the world, 
that is to bring forward the whole array of possible changes of 
sensation. 

(6.) When we come to communicate with other beings, and 
ascertain by the signs of communication that they jDass through 
the same experience as ourselves, this enhances still more the 
constancy of the association between our sensations and the 
corresponding active energies. We ascertain that at times 
when we ourselves are not affected by a particular sensation, 
as of light, other persons are affected by it. This leads us to 
generalize sensation still more, and to conceive to ourselves an 
abstraction that comprehends all our experience, past and 
present, and all the experience of others, which abstraction is 
the utmost that our minds can attain to respecting an external 
and material world. So often as I open my eyes I have the 
sensation of light (the exceptions are not material to the illus- 
tration). I thereupon associate this sensation with this action, 
and I expect in all future time that the action will lead to 
the sensation. Other persons tell me the same thing. I 
thereupon affirm as a general fact that an optical feeling will 
always follow a certain muscular feeling, to me and to other 
sentient beings ; and I can affirm nothing more, nor can I 
have any possible interest or concern with anything more. 
The assertion that light and the sun have a permanent and 
independent existence has, for its basis and for its import, that 
I, and all other beings with whom I have had any communi- 
cation, have had a certain optical feeling in conjunction with 
certain activities of which we have been conscious, and firmly 
anticipate the same coincidence in the future. The external 
existence of a stone wall means the association between certain 
optical impressions and a particular locomotive effort, and a 
further and still more decided association between touch and 
another effort, that, namely, which we call the sense of resist- 
ance. Finding the same sequence to exist with reference to 
beings in general, we generalize the fact to the very farthest 
limits, and affirm that it has always been so in the past, and 



376 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

will always be so in the future. Our language is apt to go 
beyond this ; out of all the particular experiences (which 
alone constitute the real evidence for the proposition) we con- 
struct an experience in the abstract, a most anomalous fiction, 
that goes the length of affirming that the sensation is not only 
sure to occur along with the appropriate actions, but that it 
exists whether these actions take place or not. We seem to 
have no better way of assuring ourselves and all mankind that 
with the conscious movement of opening the eyes there will 
always be a consciousness of light, than by saying that the 
light exists as independent fact, with or without any eyes to 
see it. But if we consider the case fairly, we shall see that 
this assertion errs not simply in being beyond any evidence 
that we can have, but also in being a self-contradiction. We 
are affirming that to have an existence out of our minds 
which we cannot know but as in our minds. In words we 
assert independent existence, while in the very act of doing 
so we contradict ourselves. Even a possible world implies a 
possible mind to perceive it, just as much as an actual world 
implies an actual mind. The mistake of the common modes 
of expression in this matter, is the mistake of supposing the 
abstractions of the mind to have a separate and independent 
existence. This is the doctrine of the Platonic ' ideas/ or 
' forms/ which are understood to impart all that is common 
to the particular facts or realities, instead of being derived 
from them by an operation of the mind. Thus the actual circles 
of nature derive their mathematical properties from the pre- 
existing ' idea/ or circle in the abstract ; the actual men owe 
their sameness to the ideal man. So instead of looking upon 
the doctrine of an external and independent world as a genera- 
lization or abstraction grounded on our particular experiences, 
summing up the past, and predicting the future, we have got 
into the way of maintaining the abstraction to be an independent 
reality, the foundation, or cause, or origin of all those experiences. 
39 Having touched on the metaphysical disputes con- 
cerning the first origin and precise import of our notions of 
distance and extension, I must now advert to the exact pro- 
cess whereby we come to be cognizant by sight of those pro- 



WHEATSTONE ON OUR VISIBLE PERCEPTIONS. 377 

perties that are out of the sphere of its immediate recognition. 
The relations between these four distinct facts, namely, ocular 
adjustment for seeing an object, the extent of the image on 
the retina, the distance, and the true magnitude of the object, 
are what we have to consider ; for we find that in the educated 
eye these circumstances are suggestive of one another. On this 
subject I shall avail myself of the recently published observa- 
tions of Professor Wheat stone, in his Bakerian Lecture, con- 
tained in the Philosophical Transactions for 1852. The ques- 
tion to be solved is, how do we come to connect a certain felt 
effect on the eye, with a knowledge of the distance and size of 
the object causing the impression ; as when we say that a 
lamp-post is twenty feet off, or that a distant wood is within 
three or four miles. When the gaze is still, the optical im- 
pression implies no more than these two facts, — a certain 
effect of light and colour, and an adjustment of the eyes singly 
and conjointly ; when the gaze is wandering, the movements 
and changes of adjustment operate in addition. 

' Under the ordinary conditions of vision, when an object 
is placed at a certain distance before the eyes, several con- 
curring circumstances remain constant, and they always vary 
in the same order when the distance of the object is changed. 
Thus, as we approach the object, or as it is brought nearer to 
us, the magnitude of the picture on the retina increases ; the 
inclination of the optic axes required to cause the pictures to 
fall on corresponding places of the retinas, becomes greater ; 
the divergence of the rays of light proceeding from each point 
of the object, and which determines the adaptation of the eyes 
to distinct vision of that point, increases ; and the dissimilarity 
of the two pictures projected on the retinas also becomes 
greater. It is important to ascertain in what manner our 
perception of the magnitude and distance of objects depends 
on these various circumstances, and to inquire which are the 
most and which the least influential in the judgments we 
form. To advance this inquiry beyond the point to which it 
has hitherto been brought, it is not sufficient to content our- 
selves with drawing conclusions from observations on the 
circumstances under which vision naturally occurs, as pre- 



378 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

ceding writers on this subject mostly have done, but it is 
necessary to have more extended recourse to the methods so 
successfully employed in experimental philosophy, and to 
endeavour, wherever it be possible, not only to analyse the 
elements of vision, but also to re-combine them in unusual 
manners, so that they may be associated under circumstances 
that never naturally occur.' — p. 2. 

Accordingly Mr. Wheatstone has devised an instrument, 
being a modification of his reflecting stereoscope, whereby he 
can expose pictures to the two eyes in such a manner that the 
distance can be changed while the convergence of the two 
eyes remains the same, or the convergence be altered while 
the distance remains the same, thus disassociating two effects 
that constantly go together in ordinary vision. The result of 
the experiments showed the influence of both circumstances, 
namely, the convergence of the eyes and the size of the 
picture on the retina (which is greater as the object is nearer), 
in determining our judgment of distance. He finds that the 
distance of the object remaining the same, the greater con- 
vergence of the two eyes makes the object seem smaller, this 
increased convergence being required in ordinary vision when 
a thing is brought nearer. It appears, therefore, that while 
the retinal magnitude is unaltered, greater convergence gives 
a perception of smaller size. On the other hand, leaving the 
inclination of the axes unchanged, and bringing the pictures 
nearer, thereby increasing the picture on the retina, there is 
a perception of increased size in the object. ' The perceived 
magnitude of an object, therefore, diminishes as the inclina- 
tion of the axes becomes greater, while the distance remains 
the same ; and it increases when the inclination of the axes 
remains the same, while the distance diminishes. When both 
these conditions vary inversely, as they do in ordinary vision 
when the distance of an object changes, the perceived magni- 
tude remains the same/ 

Thus as regards the perception or appreciation of the real 
"magnitudes of objects seen by the eye, the association lies 
between a certain magnitude (ascertained by other means 
than sight), and a certain inclination of the optic axes with a 






ESTIMATE OF REAL MAGNITUDE. — DISTANCE. 379 

given size of the picture on the retina. Thus the image of a 
man, of which we have a certain muscular estimate by our 
movements, when viewed at some one inclination of the optic 
axes, yields an image on the retina of a particular size ; with 
such inclination and size of image we associate the muscular 
appreciation of an object six feet high, &c. The concurrence 
of these two conditions always suggests a similar magnitude 
or extent of the thing viewed. And if the optic inclination is 
made smaller, that is, if the axes of the eyes approach more to 
parallelism, while at the same time the image on the retina is 
correspondingly less, as by removing the object to a greater 
distance, there will still be a percejation of the same size, or 
the same muscular appreciation will be suggested to the mind. 
We have an association of the size of a man with a great many 
different combinations of those two circumstances produced 
by variation of actual distance. 

40. And next, as respects our perception and estimate of 
distance, or the suggestion of a given locomotive exertion 
with a visual appearance. On this head Mr. Wheatstone's 
observations are somewhat different from the received views. 
He considers that the appreciation of distance, instead of pre- 
ceding the estimate of magnitude, follows it. ' It is the 
prevalent opinion that the sensation which accompanies the 
inclination of the optic axes immediately suggests distance, 
and that the perceived magnitude of an object is a judgment 
arising from our consciousness of its distance and of the mag- 
nitude of its picture on the retina. From the experiments I 
have brought forward, it rather appears to me that what the 
sensation which is connected with the convergences of the axes 
immediately suggests, is a correction of the retinal magnitude 
to make it agree with the real magnitude of the object, 
and that distance, instead of being a simple perception, is a 
judgment arising from a comparison of the retinal and per- 
ceived magnitudes. However this may be, unless other signs 
accompany the sensation of convergence, the notion of distance 
we thence derive is uncertain and obscure, whereas the per- 
ception of the change of magnitude it occasions is obvious and 
unmistakeable/ According to this view, distance is more 



380 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

firmly associated with the retinal magnitude than with the 
other circumstances of optical inclination. When we view an 
object receding, as a carriage, we are impressed with the 
change of distance more through the diminishing size of the 
picture it makes on the retina than through the approach of 
the optic axes to parallelism. I am not at all surprised at 
this, seeing that the change in the size of the retinal picture is 
so much more evident and distinct as a sensation than the 
very slight corresponding alteration in the inclination of the 
axes. When we once ascertain the real magnitude of a body, 
the approach or receding of it is very easily measured from 
this change of the picture. Now, according to Mr. Wheat- 
stone, the inclination of the axes, in company with a given 
retinal picture, suggests the magnitude first, and from the true 
magnitude thus known and the retinal magnitude we infer the 
distance.* 



* When a known object is magnified by a lens we suppose it brought 
nearer to us, owing to this increase of retinal magnitude while the con- 
vergence remains the same. 

I have not adverted in the text to the signs of distance furnished by the 
colour and appearance of objects. This point has been well illustrated by 
Dr. Reid. — Inquiry, Chap. vi. Sect. 22. I quote the following para- 
graphs : — 

' The colours of objects, according as they are more distant, become 
more faint and languid, and are tinged more with the azure of the interven- 
ing atmosphere; to this we may add, that their minute parts become more 
indistinct, and their outline less accurately defined. It is by these means 
chiefly, that painters can represent objects at very different distances, upon 
the same canvass. And the diminution of the magnitude of an object 
would not have the effect of making it appear to be at a great distance, 
without this degradation of colour, and indistinctness of the outline and of 
the minute parts. If a painter should make a human figure ten times less 
than other human figures that are in the same piece, having the colours as 
bright and the outline and minute parts as accurately defined, it would not 
have the appearance of a man at a great distance, but of a pigmy or 
Lilliputian. 

' When an object has a known variety of colours, its distance is more 
clearly indicated by the gradual dilation of the colours into one another, 
than when it is of one uniform colour. In the steeple which stands before 
me at a small distance, the joinings of the stones are clearly perceptible ; 
the grey colour of the stone, and the white cement are distinctly limited : 
when I see it at a greater distance, the joinings of the stones are less dis- 
tinct, and the colour of the stone and of the cement begin to dilute into one 
another: at a distance still greater, the joinings disappear altogether, and 
the variety of colour vanishes. 

' In an apple tree which stands at the distance of about twelve feet, 



PERCEPTION OF SOLIDITY. 381 

41. Passing now to the perception of solidity, or solid 
effect, on which the discovery of the stereoscope has cast a new 
light, by connecting it with the action of the two eyes, I find 



covered with flowers, I can perceive the figure and the colour of the leaves 
and petals ; pieces of branches, some larger others smaller, peeping through 
the intervals of the leaves — some of them enlightened by the sun's rays, 
others shaded ; and some openings of the sky are perceived through the 
whole. When I gradually remove from this tree, the appearance, even 
as to colour, changes every minute. First, the smaller parts, then the larger, 
are gradually confounded and mixed. The colours of leaves, petals, 
branches, and shy are gradually diluted into each other, and the colour of 
the whole becomes more and more uniform. This change of appearance, 
corresponding to the several distances, marks the distance more exactly 
than if the whole object had been of one colour. 

' Dr. Smith in his ' Optics ' gives us a very curious observation made by 
Bishop Berkeley in his travels through Italy and Sicily. He observed, that 
in those countries, cities and palaces seen at a great distance appeared 
nearer to him by several miles than they really were; and he very judi- 
ciously imputed it to this cause. That the purity of the Italian and 
Sicilian air gave to very distant objects that degree of brightness and dis- 
tinctness which, in the grosser air of his own country, was to be seen only 
in those that are near. The purity of the Italian air hath been assigned as 
the reason why the Italian painters commonly give a more lively colour to 
the sky than the Flemish. Ought they not, for the same reason, to give 
less degradation to the colours, and less indistinctness of the minute parts, 
in the representation of very distant objects p 

' It is very certain that, as in air uncommonly pure, we are apt to think 
visible objects nearer and less than they really are, so, in air uncommonly 
foggy, we are apt to think them more distant and larger than the truth. 
Walking by the sea-side in a thick fog, I see an object which seems to me 
to be a man on horseback, and at the distance of about half a mile. My 
companion who has better eyes, or is more accustomed to see such objects 
in such circumstances, assures me that it is a sea-gull, and not a man on 
horseback. Upon a second view, I immediately assent to his opinion, and 
now it appears to me to be a sea-gull, and at the distance only of seventy 
or eighty yards. The mistake made on this occasion, and the correction of 
it, are both so sudden, that we are at a loss whether to call them by the 
name of judgment, or by that of simple perception. 

' It is not worth while to dispute about names, but it is evident that my 
belief, both first and last, was produced rather by signs than by arguments, 
and that the mind proceeded to the conclusion in both cases by habit, and 
not by ratiocination. And the process of the mind seems to have been 
this — First, not knowing, or not minding the effect of a foggy air on the 
visible appearance of objects, the object seems to me to have that degrada- 
tion of colour, and that indistinctness of the outline, which objects have at 
the distance of half a mile ; therefore, from the visible appearance as a sign, 
I immediately proceed to the belief that the object is half a mile distant. 
Then, this distance together with the visible magnitude, signify to me the 
real magnitude, which, supposing the distance to be half a mile, must be 
equal to that of the man on horseback. Thus the deception is brought 
about. But when I am assured that it is a sea-gull, the real magnitude of 



382 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

that Mr. Wheatstone, in his published paper, considers this as 
still imperfectly explained. I have reason to believe, however, 
that having made many experiments with the view of eluci- 
dating the point, he now inclines to the view that there is a 
mental effect produced over and above the optical effect, which 
mental suggestion overrides the optical impression, and gives a 
perception really different from the literal sensation. The 
sense of solid effect, arising from the conjoined action of two 
dissimilar views of an object presented to the two eyes, means 



a sea-gull, together with the magnitude presented to the eye, immediately 
suggest the distance, which in this case, cannot he above seventy or eighty 
yards ; the indistinctness of the figure likewise suggests the fogginess of 
the air as its cause ; and now the whole chain of signs, and things signified, 
seems stronger and better connected than it was before ; the half mile 
vanishes to eighty yards ; the man on horseback dwindles to a sea-gull ; I 
get a new perception, and wonder how I got the former or what is become 
of it ; for it is now so entirely gone, that I cannot recover it. 

' It ought to be observed that, in order to produce such deceptions from 
the clearness or fogginess of the air, it must be uncommonly clear or un- 
commonly foggy ; for we learn from experience, to make allowance for that 
variety of constitutions of the air which we have been accustomed to observe, 
and of which we are aware. Bishop Berkeley therefore committed a mistake, 
when he attributed the large appearance of the horizontal moon to the 
faintness of her light, occasioned by its passing through a larger tract of 
atmosphere : for we are so much accustomed to see the moon in all degrees 
of faintness and brightness, from the greatest to the least, that we learn to 
make allowance for it ; and do not imagine her magnitude increased by the 
faintness of her appearance. Besides, it is certain that the horizontal moon 
seen through a tube which cuts off the view of the interjacent ground, and 
of all terrestrial objects, loses all that unusual appearance of magnitude. 

' We frequently perceive the distance of objects, by means of intervening 
or contiguous objects, whose distance or magnitude is likewise known. 
When I perceive certain fields or tracts of ground to lie between me and an 
object, it is evident that these may become signs of its distance. And 
although we have no information of the dimensions of such fields or tracts, 
yet their similitude to others which we know suggests their dimensions. 

' We are so much accustomed to measure with our eye the ground which 
we travel, and to compare the judgment of distances formed by sight, with 
our experience or information, that we learn by degrees, in this way, to 
form a more accurate judgment of the distance of terrestrial objects, than 
we could do by any of the means before mentioned. An object placed on 
the top of a high building, appears much less than when placed upon the 
ground, at the same distance. When it stands upon the ground, the inter- 
vening tract of ground serves as a sign of its distance : and the distance 
together with the visible magnitude, serves as a sign of its real magnitude. 
But when the object is placed on high, this sign of its distance is taken 
away, the remaining signs lead us to place it at a less distance ; and this 
less distance, together with the visible magnitude, becomes a sign of a less 
real magnitude.' 



SUGGESTION OF THE VAKYING DISTANCES OF A VIEW. 383 

a suggestion to the mind that one part of the object is farther 
off than another as estimated by our locomotive organs ; in 
other words, the impression revives to us an idea of movement 
to or from the eye in company with the picture. When the 
two eyes view the perspective of a street, there is brought up 
the idea of a certain amount of walking exertion or other 
locomotive measurement as part of the perception thence 
arising. The two eyes looking at a footstool bring up in like 
manner ideas of greater or less remoteness of the parts. Now 
the difficulty lies in explaining ' why two dissimilar pictures 
projected on the two retinae, give rise to the perception of an 
object in relief/ ' It may be supposed/ says Mr. Wheatstone, 
' that we see but one point of a field of view at the same 
instant, the one, namely, to which the optic axes are directed, 
while all other points are seen so indistinctly that the mind 
does not recognise them to be either single or double, and 
that the figure is appreciated by directing the point of con- 
vergence of the optic axes successively to a sufficient number 
of its points to enable us to judge accurately of its form/ But 
observation does not confirm this supposed indistinctness of 
those parts for which the eyes are not adjusted ; on looking at 
a stereoscopic view, for example, we find that we obtain a clear 
and distinct picture of the whole, even when the eyes are 
steadily fixed upon one point, during which act, by the sup- 
position, all points nearer or farther ought to be confusedly 
and imperfectly perceived. Hence it is that Mr. Wheatstone 
has been led to adopt the above-mentioned view of a mental 
suggestion coming in to present a clear and perfectly formed 
idea, notwithstanding the optical fact that for many parts of 
the view there actually falls upon the eyes what would be a 
double and indistinct image. The mind being once accus- 
tomed to fully formed views of all kinds, these are revived by 
the force of association, the main circumstance for determining 
the view being present, namely the double aspect which our 
experience has always connected with a solid effect, or an 
effect where varying distance is conjoined with lateral exten- 
sion. 

43. Into this matter, however, I do not enter farther than 



38 4 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

to remark that the same circumstances that enable us to 
appreciate the distances of different objects, enable us also to 
appreciate solid effect, or the continuity of an object through 
varying distances. The change in the inclination of the axes 
and the retinal picture together, in proper proportions, suggests 
the width of a street to be the same all through, and this being 
the case, the diminished picture tells us of the remoteness of 
the different parts in succession. So with any other object 
extended in three dimensions. 

A question has been raised as to our mode of perceiving 
the direction of an object from the eye. On this I would still 
repeat that direction is not a perception of sight alone ; its 
very meaning precludes the supposition. It implies the loco- 
motive or other movement that would lead us up to the object, 
or produce a definite change in its appearance. But there is 
a certain optical effect constantly associated with the sense of 
direction, as there is with the sense of magnitude or of distance, 
and this effect it is interesting as a matter of fact to ascertain. 
Now it appears most probable that the line of visible direction 
is a line passing from the place of an object's impression on 
the retina through the centre of the crystalline lens:* hence 
we associate an effect on the centre of the retina with a direc- 
tion on the line of the axis of the eye, while an impression to 
the right of this point would suggest a position left of the axis. 
But without the experience of our moving organs generally we 
should never know either the meaning of direction or the fact 
that a certain impression of the retina implied a certain course 
for us to take in reference to the object. If the optical law 
had been entirely different, if, for example, an object were 
to lie in a direction inclined 45 to the plane of its image in 
the retina, we should equally well become acquainted with 
direction ; experience would connect the locomotive estimate 
with the visual impression exactly as is done now. The 
question is very much of the same nature as that of inverted 



* This line has heen variously stated. Sir David Brewster affirms that it 
passes through the centre of the eye. See p. 216 of a work entitled, JSssai 
sur les Phvsphenes, £fc, par le Dr. Seebe, Paris, 1853. 



LOCALIZATION OF BODILY FEELINGS. S85 

vision, formerly discussed ; it matters not where or how the 
optical effect takes place, association connects the true per- 
ception with it. In fact, when we dress by a mirror we 
perform a series of inversions, very difficult at first, but in the 
end as easy as it is to work under direct vision. 

43. Localization of Bodily Feelings. — The localization of 
our bodily feelings presents an interesting case of acquired 
perception. Previous to experience we have no notion of the 
seat of any local sensation, as, for example, a pain in the 
shoulder, or the toe. It is impossible we should have such a 
notion instinctively, the very nature of the case forbids it, 
seeing that we must connect an internal feeling with a picture 
to the eye, or an estimate to the touch, of the part where the 
feeling arises. 

Our own body is a thing exposed to all our senses and to 
the sweep of our movements like a table, or a statue, or a 
fowling piece. The eye can scan nearly the whole of it ; the 
hand can sweep over it ; the legs can move over parts of it ; 
the ear can hear the sounds it makes ; the mouth and tongue 
can co-operate with the hand. The eyes can appreciate the 
colour, outline, and solidity ; the vision, accustomed to the 
perception of size and distance, can form an estimate of the 
remoteness of the parts and the magnitude of the whole ; the 
body's own various movements concurring in the estimate. 

So far the body is to us an external object ; but it is also 
the seat of sensibility of various kinds, which sensibility we 
can usually refer to some locality at the head, arms, chest, &c. 
The question arises, how do we come to have this knowledge 
of locality ? I answer, by experience and association, based 
on the distinctness of the nerve fibres supplied to the different 
parts. (See Touch, p. 184). A pinch in the toe is not sensibly 
different in quality from a pinch in the finger ; but if both 
were happening together, we should have a sensation of two 
actions, and not of a single action made stronger. This is owing 
to the distinctness of the nerves, which keep their currents 
apart up to the cerebral centre ; and through this distinctness 
we can form separate associations with each. I can associate 
one pain with the sight of my finger, another pain with the 

c c 



386 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

sight of my toe, and a third with the position of my arm that 
determines the crown of the head. An infant at the outset 
knows not where to look for the cause of an irritation when 
anything touches it ; by and by the child observes a coinci- 
dence between a feeling and a pressure operating on some one 
part ; whence a feeling in the hand is associated with the sight 
of the hand, and so for other members. 

When the feeling is more internal, as in the interior of the 
trunk, we have greater difficulty in tracing the precise seat, often 
we are quite at a loss on the point. In this case we have to 
trust to some indications that come to the surface, or to the 
effect of superficial pressure on the deep parts. By getting a 
blow on the ribs we come to connect feelings in the chest with 
the place on our map of the body ; we can thus make experi- 
ments on the deep-seated organs, and learn the meaning of 
their indications. But the more inaccessible the parts, the 
more uncertainty is there in assigning the locality of their 
sensations ; if, in addition, they are not well supplied with 
distinctive nerves, the difficulty is still greater. The liver, 
the spleen, and the kidneys, are, I believe, all indistinct as 
regards the feelings connected with them. In those places on 
the skin where the sentient units of nerve are wide apart, as 
in the back, the calf of the leg, &c, we can never acquire a 
minute appreciation of locality; the limit of distinctness of the 
nerve fibres will be the limit of the acquired perception. 

This association between an internal feeling and the sio-ht 
or touch of the place where it originates, acts reciprocally, and 
produces singular effects. Fixing the eye on a part of the 
body, as the hand, and intently regarding it for some time, 
we can actually generate a sensation in the skin, by a sort of 
back current ; the idea, which is a past experience revived on 
the same nervous tracks, has a tendency to induce the reality. 
In the artificial sleep known as the mesmeric state, this in- 
fluence has been carried to great lengths. Mr. Braid has 
employed it to induce healthy actions upon diseased organs, 
being able also to cause the opposite effect of inducing un- 
healthy changes. 

44. Discrimination of Differences in Sensations. — I have 



DISCRIMINATION OF SENSATIONS. 387 

assumed it as a fact of Sensation that we are conscious of 
degree, or of less and more, in the intensity of the feeling. 
The full and accurate meaning of this fact must now be ascer- 
tained ; and the discussion is better brought in at the present 
stage than in the First Book under the head of Sensation. 

The discrimination of degrees of a feeling of sense, — a 
relish, a coolness, a taste, an impression of colour, — has three 
aspects, in accordance with the threefold partition of mind ; 
that is to say, it may be an Emotional, a Volitional, or an 
Intellectual discrimination. 

We are emotionally sensible to an increase or decrease of 
a feeling when the general agitation of the frame, in other 
words, the expression of the feeling, is made to rise or fall. 
Thus in music, when the listener is stimulated to an increased 
expression of feeling by a particular stroke of melody, we say 
that he has an emotional sense of the difference between that 
and other parts of the performance. Another person listening 
to the same music, but not agitated by one part more than 
another, is not emotionally sensible of any difference in the 
stream of melody. 

We are volitionally sensible to a difference of feeling 
when we are stimulated to more or less of action on account 
of it. Thus if I am warming my hands at a fire, and any one 
stirs the fire to greater intensity, so as to be too hot for my 
purpose, I withdraw my hands to a distance ; the sense of 
difference here shows itself principally in action- Again, if I 
have before me on the table several kinds of fruit, and taste 
first one and then another, rejecting what I like least, and 
partaking of the best, I display my sense of difference voli- 
tionally. I may give vent to my expression of feeling as well? 
and exclaim how much better the pears are than the apples, 
which would be an emotional discrimination ; but the eating 
of the one in preference to the other is a manifestation of 
volitional perception of the degree of relish produced Jay the 
several fruits. So the energy of my revulsion from an acute 
pain, — a stroke, a prick, or a scald, — is the volitional measure 
of my feeling of the pain. 

45. Passing now to the intellectual discrimination of sen- 

c c 2 



388 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

sations, we find a somewhat greater complexity. The two 
other kinds of difference are fundamental and original effects ; 
they operate from the earliest dawn of sentient life. The first 
experience of a pleasure or a pain determines a certain amount 
of emotional display, or of volitional urgency, or of both ; and if 
the pleasure or pain be increased so will those effects. If the 
constitution has great susceptibility, a very slight degree more 
or less of the outward or inward stimulus will manifest itself 
in a change of the emotional display; if there be little suscep- 
tibility, a considerable variation of stimulus will be required 
to produce a difference of emotion. This delicacy may bear 
no proportion to the vehemence of the expression on the 
whole ; a loud and violent manifestation of feeling indicates 
nothing as to a sense of small differences of degree. This is 
to be shown by the number of shades of expression that can be 
interpolated, so to speak, between the faintest and the strongest 
manifestations within the compass of the individual. A coarse 
mental framework is one that has merely one howl for all 
strengths of excitement ; a fine emotional nature, from the 
very beginning, quivers variously to the slightest shades of 
difference of touch. Precisely the same remarks apply to 
delicacy of Volition. It is not the fury of the action stimu- 
lated that shows the volitional sensitiveness ; it is the finely 
graduated strength of it according to the degree of the sti- 
mulus. This graduated effect is shown in the infancy as well 
as the maturity of the individual ; in the newest no less than 
in the most familiar impressions. 

But the Intellectual discrimination, although a primitive 
fact like the other kinds, has not a distinct criterion at first. 
It is manifested after a certain amount of experience together 
with a process of association or acquirement. If there be two 
sensations that have no difference emotionally or volitionally, 
the only difference remaining is the intellectual, and that does 
not show itself by a direct and immediate display ; it comes 
out when the two are used as pegs to hang different actions 
upon, or as marks for different emotions. For example, the 
difference of feeling between touching one point by the fingers 
and touching two points, is a difference that shows itself 



DISCRIMINATION OF TOUCHES. S89 

neither in emotion nor in volition, if we suppose the contact 
so slight as to give neither pleasure nor pain. But there is a 
difference, nevertheless ; the mind is not identically affected 
by the two touches ; it would not recognise in the one a 
repetition of the other. The difference thus felt is intellectual, 
and shows itself by connecting different associations with the 
two. Thus if with the feeling of the single point I see the 
object, namely, a piece of knitting wire, and if with the feeling 
of the double point I see a pair of compasses, the one feeling 
will be associated with the sight of the wire, and the other 
with the sight of the compasses ; and the two sensations of 
touch will manifest their difference by bringing forward each 
its separate image to the view. If the mind were not dif- 
ferently affected in some way or other by these two contacts, 
it could not form distinctive associations with them, such that 
the single point always brought forward the wire and. the 
double point the compasses ; each impression would bring 
forward either object at random. 

But perhaps a still more elementary instance of intellectual 
discrimination is that furnished by the appending of different 
actions to sensations distinct intellectually without being dis- 
tinct emotionally or volitionally. The difference between the 
visible tint of brown sugar and the colour of mustard is very 
small ; as objects to the eye yielding emotions of colour, they 
may be said to be hardly at all distinguished ; they have no 
such difference as exists between a lump of mud and a bril- 
liant nosegay. What distinction of colour really obtains 
between the two may serve an intellectual purpose, but as 
regards other purposes it is null. Now the way that the 
intellectual discrimination manifests itself is very obvious. A 
child has tasted sugar, and in an evil hour has partaken of 
mustard ; the difference of the two objects to the taste is 
shown both emotionally and volitionally ; there is a com- 
placent expression and strong attraction for the one, and a 
contortion of feature with intense repulsion towards the other. 
With these exciting experiences, the difference of appearance 
of the two is noted and quickly associated ; the difference of 
colour, in itself quite unexciting, acquires a factitious impor- 



390 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

tance by being significant of other differences of the strong 
self-manifesting kind. The sight of the sugar thenceforth 
spurs eager efforts to get hold of the reality, the sight of the 
other prompts repulsion. Thus it is that a purely intellectual 
difference is, as it were, latent, until an emotional or volitional 
difference is made to hang upon it. In the mature conscious- 
ness we can doubtless recognise it as an isolated fact, and 
express it by language, as when I say I feel a double or a 
triple-pronged fork with my fingers ; but this instance itself 
shows that some association is needed to mark it to others and 
retain it in one's own mind. 

The sensations of Touch furnish apposite instances of 
intellectual discrimination, in the midst of perfect identity as 
regards emotion and volition. Take, for example, the two 
hands. If we compare the feeling of touch in the right hand 
with the same kind of contact in the left, we find that they are 
absolutely identical ; the one does not kindle up more emotion 
nor stimulate more volition than the other. But for intel- 
lectual purposes, these feelings are quite distinct; they can 
sustain totally different associations. With a touch upon my 
left hand, I associate a whole field of imagery seen on my left 
side, and with a touch on my right hand, I associate another set 
of imagery in connexion with my right side. If any one pinch 
my right hand, I incline my head and direct my eyes to the 
right; if my left hand is pinched in precisely the same 
manner, my movements are all towards the left. The feelings 
are identical in everything but association. This possibility 
of suspending different associations proves that there is a real 
difference in the sensations, that they are not confounded in 
the brain, but we should in vain endeavour to trace this dif- 
ference in the immediate consciousness. Association alone 
brings it out, and hence we infer the purely intellectual nature 
of the discrimination. 

The very same line of illustration can be followed if we 
fasten upon the muscular feelings. The feeling of a tensed 
muscle has a uniform character all over the body, the degree of 
tension being made equal, and allowing for differences in the size 
of muscles, and, perhaps also, in their degree of intimacy with 



DISCRIMINATION OF THE EYE. 39 J 

the brain. Not to insist on the case of the two arms, or the 
two legs, or the rotation of the body in opposite ways, which 
would be identical with the foregoing illustration from touch, 
I can suppose a weight borne by the arm to give the same 
amount of muscular feeling as a pressure exerted by the foot. 
Under this supposition two feelings are produced, that have 
no difference either as yielding emotion or as stimulating 
volition; yet experience shows that they are recognised as 
distinct by the mind. The two muscular tensions are made 
manifest to the consciousness by different nerves, and, on 
this fact, the mind is able to build and maintain distinct 
associations, although it is not aware of any difference, either 
of quantity or quality, in the feelings as such. We have already 
called attention to the articulate character of the sense of 
Touch, arising from the independence of the nerves of the 
skin, as distributed over the general surface, — a remark appli- 
cable also to the nerves supplied to the different muscles. 
The same kind of feeling, coming from different parts, is 
recognised as different by taking on different associations. 
Before any associations are formed the difference is latent; 
after the growth of distinctive connexions it is unmistakeable. 
It is shown that the localizing of our feelings — the possi- 
bility of assigning a locality to each — is founded on this dis- 
tinctness of the nerves arising from different parts. If a prick 
in the leg and a prick in the arm were as undistinguishable in 
every way, as they are to the mere sense of pain, we should 
never be able to connect the one with our notion of the leg 
and the other with our notion of the arm, or with any of the 
other discriminating features of those two members. 

If not superfluous, after these examples, the eye might be 
adduced to the same effect. The place of the retina, im- 
pinged upon by a ray of light, is in the main unimportant as 
respects the feeling of light, but there is, notwithstanding, a 
real difference in the intellectual point of view, brought out,' 
as in the other cases, by association. We can thus discrimi- 
nate right and left, up and down, centre and circumference, in 
our field of view, as soon as any characteristic actions or con- 
sequences become connected with the different portions of the 



392 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

retina, impinged upon from these various outward positions of 
the rays of light. The retina is, in this respect, identical with 
the skin ; it consists of a number of independent nerve fibres, 
each transmitting the same quality of impression, but to a dis- 
tinct region of the common centre of visual impressions, and 
so as to form the starting point of a perfectly distinct series of 
accompanying impressions. A man at a telegraphic station, 
under the old system of signals, saw the same arm repeated to 
his view, but with its picture on the lower part of the retina 
he connects one action, on the upper part another action. 
This is intellectual discrimination. 

Hence we can understand how purely intellectual is the 
whole machinery of signs, marks, ciphers, symbols, artificial 
representations, made use of in the business of life and in 
the various sciences.* 



* Sir William Hamilton's theory of the inverse relation between Sen- 
sation and Perception. This theory has been stated by its author as 
follows — 'Though a perception be only possible under condition of a 
sensation ; still, that above a certain limit the more intense the sensation 
or subjective consciousness, the more indistinct the perception or objective 
consciousness.' By the 'sensation' is here meant the feeling as regards 
pleasure or pain, the emotional and volitional characters of the mental state ; 
by the ' perception ' I understand what is termed above the intellectual dis- 
crimination ; it is the difference between the excitement of a blaze of 
sunshine and the discrimination of two natural history specimens. These 
two effects Sir William Hamilton believes to be inverse to one another ; 
that is, in proportion as the one is strong the other is weak. I am disposed 
to admit the truth of this doctrine to a very considerable extent. Of the 
incorrectness of the opposite view, which would assert that feeling and dis- 
crimination are proportionally developed, — a view that seems to have been 
tacitty admitted by most previous philosophers, — I have no doubt. But it 
appears to me that the facts as to the relation of these two qualities, — the 
emotional on the one hand, and the intellectual on the other — show a 
greater degree of complexity than this law expresses, even although it be 
correct as to the prevailing character of the relation. 

The following extract contains the statement of the facts adduced in 
support of this theory by its author. ' If we take a survey of the senses, 
we shall find, that exactly in proportion as each affords an idiopathic sensa- 
tion more or less capable of being carried to an extreme either of pleasure or 
pain, does it afford, but in an inverse ratio, the condition of an objective 
perception more or less distinct. In the senses of Sight and Hearing, as 
contrasted with those of Taste and Smell, the counter proportions are 
precise and manifest, and precisely as in animals these senses gain in their 
objective character as means of knowledge, do they lose in their subjective 
character as sources of pleasurable or painful sensations. To a dog, for 
instance, in whom the sense of smell is so acute, all odours seem, in them- 






393 



ASSOCIATES WITH EMOTION. 



46. The element of Emotion, or pleasure and pain, viewed 
as such, enters into alliance with the more intellectual ele- 
ments of the mind, as for example those perceptions of out- 
ward things that we have just been considering. This alliance 



selves, to be indifferent. In Touch or Feeling the same analogy holds good, 
and within itself; for in this case, where the sense is diffused throughout 
the body, the subjective and objective vary in then- proportions at different 
parts. The parts most subjectively sensible, those chiefly susceptible of 
pain and pleasure, furnish precisely the obtusest organs of touch ; and the 
acutest organs of touch do not possess, if ever even that, more than average 
amount of subjective sensibility. — The experiments of Weber have shown, 
how differently in degree different parts of the skin possess the power of 
touch proper ; this power, as measured by the smallness of the interval at 
which the blunted points of a pair of compasses, brought into contact with 
the skin, can be discriminated as double, varying from the twentieth of an 
English inch at the tip of the tongue, and a tenth on the volar surface of 
the third finger, to two inches and a half over the greater part of the neck, 
back, arms, and thighs. If these experiments be repeated with a pair of 
compasses not very obtuse, and capable, therefore, by a slight pressure, of 
exciting a sensation in the skin, it will be found, that whilst Weber's 
observations, as to the remarkable difference of the different parts in the 
power of tactile discrimination, are correct ; that, at the same time, what 
he did not observe, there is no corresponding difference between the parts 
in their sensibility to superficial pricking, scratching, &c. On the contrary, 
it will be found that, in the places where, objectively, touch is most alive, 
subjective feeling is, in the first instance at least, in some degree deadened; 
and that the parts the most obtuse in discriminating the duplicity of the 
touching points, are by no means the least acute to the sensation excited by 
their pressure. 

'For example ; — The tip of the tongue has fifty ', the inferior surface of 
the third finger twenty-five times the tactual discrimination of the arm. 
But it will be found, on trial, that the arm is more sensitive to a sharp 
point applied, but not strongly, to the skin, than either the tongue or the 
finger, and (depilated of course) at least as alive to the presence of a very 
light body, as a hair, a thread, a feather, drawn along the surface. In the 
several places the phenomena thus vary : — In those parts where touch 
proper prevails, a subacute point, lightly pressed upon the skin, determines 
a sensation of which we can hardly predicate either pain or pleasure, and 
nearly limited to the place on which the pressure is made,' &c. — Edition of 
Reid, p. 863. 

On these last experiments I would remark, first, that the tongue is 
scarcely a fair subject of comparison with the skin, seeing that the two 
tissues are not of the same nature ; a matter of considerable importance as 
regards a pleasurable or painful irritation ; and, therefore, the fairest mode 
of conducting the trial is skin with skin. 

Secondly, if trial were made of the cheek compared with the other parts, 
the inverse proportion contended for would not hold good. To a prick, or 



S94 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

or association between feeling and imagery gives rise to a 
number of interesting phenomena, some of which may be 
introduced here as presenting a new case of the associating 
process. 

In the pleasures and pains derived through the various 
senses and through the moving organs, associations spring up 
with collateral things, the causes or frequent accompaniments 
of those feelings. Thus we connect the pleasures of repose 
with an easy chair, a sofa, or a bed, and the pleasure of riding 
with a horse and carriage. The siarht of food recals a certain 
part of the pleasure of eating. The preparation of meals and 
the catering for the table are interesting avocations through a 
reference to the end they serve. The representation to the 
eye of fragrant flowers in a painting has power to revive some 



a smart blow, the cheek is at least as sensitive as any portion of the skin 
whatever ; bat it is certainly not the least discriminating in Weber's scale. 
In fact it stands high in the scale, being equal to the paim of the hand and 
the extremity of the great toe, and inferior only to the tongue, lips, and 
fingers. In this case, therefore, the inverse ratio of sensibility and discri- 
mination does not subsist. 

Taking the cheek and the back of the hand as compared with the palm 
of the hand, one would be disposed to say that the sensitiveness to pain 
varied with the structure of the cuticle, while the discrimination depends 
solely on the supply of nerves. Let the cuticle be thickened as in the hand 
and foot ; the parts are rendered obtuse to a blow. But where the cuticle 
is thin, the skin is correspondingly tender or susceptible to painful or 
pleasurable irritation. This is a popular belief, whether scientifically true 
or not. Any one keenly alive to a smart or an attack is said to be thin- 
skinned. In addition to this, I am disposed to believe that the parts 
nearest the brain are in consequence more sensitive than remote parts. 
The agonies of tooth-ache, face-ache, pains of the nose and ear, appear to be 
more intense than would arise from similar irritations in the lower extremi- 
ties. If this be a general rule, the skin of the face would be more sensitive 
than the skin of the arm or the hand, and these more than the leg or foot. 

In so far as the differences of sensibility and discrimination depend on 
the mind. Sir W. Hamilton's theoiy of inverse relation is more strictly 
applicable. It is to me quite evident that if the whole mind and attention 
be concentrated on the sensation as a feeling, as giving pleasure or pain, 
there will be a lack of attention to the intellectual quality. But then it is 
possible that the mind should be awake to both qualities, and to the one for 
the sake of the other. Thus if I am exceedingly annoyed with the bitter- 
ness of a taste, I am also impressed with its character as distinguished from 
other bitters; the intensity of my dislike will impress upon me the discri- 
minating character of the substance among other substances, an effect 
strictly intellectual. 






REMEMBERED EMOTIONS OFTEN PERVERTED. 395 

of the pleasures that we derive from the reality through the 
sense of smell. The pleasures of music in so far as they 
can be enjoyed in the retrospect are evoked purely by asso- 
ciation. 

We have seen that it is a quality of some emotions to be 
more recoverable in idea than others ; for example, the 
pleasures of music and spectacle are recovered from the past 
more completely than the pleasures of exercise, repose, warmth, 
or repletion. In those higher emotions, the association restores 
very nearly the actual experience of the reality \ in the inferior 
sensations, the occasion of the pleasure or pain is remembered, 
but very little of the actual tone of the feeling. 

47. Another fact respecting remembered emotions must 
now be added to the foregoing, and that is, that these are very 
often 'perverted in their character through some influence of 
the mind that comes to bear upon them at the moment 
of their being revived. This influence is most usually the 
temper or other emotion prevailing at the time ; which 
1 temper may happen to be unfavourable to the spreading out 
of the past emotion in the accurate colouring of the original. 
Thus in remembering a period of joy and carousal, if the 
present temper is sour and melancholy, the recollection will 
be unfaithful and perverted as regards the emotion : we shall 
almost certainly underrate the feelings that we then expe- 
rienced. If, on the other hand, the remembrance of a day 
passed in pleasure is brought forward at a time of high elation, 
the chance is that there will be a total omission of the shades 
of the original, and that the recollection will be too highly 
coloured. This is an exceedingly important consideration as 
regards practical life ; for these remembered emotions are the 
data for governing our present actions ; and any inaccuracy in 
the record of past feelings will be the cause of mistakes and 
disappointments as regards the future. Desire and hope, 
which are based upon remembered emotion, are liable to be 
perverted by false remembrance, and it becomes every one's 
interest to take precautions for preserving a sound estimate 
of the joys and pains that are past. There is a logic of emo- 



396 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

tional experience as well as of other experience ; and in this 
search after truthfulness of feeling, natural temper and the 
momentary dispositions are the great sources of fallacy. 

Accurate recollection of past emotional states is most easy 
in the more recoverable emotions ; that is to say, the pleasure 
of a spectacle will be more closely reproduced than the 
pleasure of a repast. Next to this consideration we must 
rank, as a ruling circumstance, the goodness of the associating 
bond either in consequence of much repetition or on account 
of the natural force of contiguous adhesiveness inherent in the 
character. In other words, we shall remember most accurately 
what we have experienced oftenest ; and an intellectual and 
retentive mind will have a chance to be faithful in the recol- 
lection of pleasures and pains ; a fact which is very much in 
favour of the sound guidance of the intellectual man's life. 
Then, too, there is to be taken into the account the habit of 
attending to one's states of mind ; when this habit exists we 
make at each important epoch of our feelings a sort of estimate 
for future purposes, likely to be much more accurate than the 
recollection would be apart from such an estimate. There are 
occasions when a person should write down their feelings in 
order to preserve the most faithful record that can be had of 
them, just as a scientific observer distrusts recollection in the 
details of complicated facts. Such an occasion for carefully 
recording the feelings at the moment is furnished when one is 
making the experiment of new pleasures and new modes of 
life ; for with many minds the memory of such feelings after 
a time, or in an altered situation, would be most treacherous. 
The difference between a faithful and a perverted recollection 
of past emotions, is the difference between reason and imagi- 
nation as applied to present conduct. 

48. It will not be out of place to select a few examples of 
the association of the deeper emotions of the mind with the 
notions that we have of outward things, by which connexion 
these emotions also can be made present in the absence of 
their proper stimulus. The emotions of tenderness, self-com- 
placency, irascibility, terror, &c, when stimulated repeatedly 
in the presence of some one object, enter into mental partner- 



ASSOCIATION OF OBJECTS WITH EMOTIONS. 397 

ship with that object, and the two individuals of the coaple 
are thenceforth able to revive each other, the object recalling 
the emotion, and the emotion restoring the object. 

The emotion of natural tenderness is brought out chiefly 
towards sentient beings, and comes after a time to flow habitually 
in connexion with certain persons or living creatures, who are 
then said to be objects of affection or attachment. The feel- 
ing, moreover, overflows upon places and things, stimulating 
a tender regard towards inanimate nature. The associations 
with home, with one's native spot ; with the tokens of friend- 
ship and the relics of the departed, are made powerful by all 
the causes that give force to the contiguous bond. The natural 
abundance of the emotion in the character, repetition, a good 
natural adhesiveness, the disposition to cultivate this peculiar 
region of associations, all contribute to strengthen the link that 
enables persons or things to diffuse tender feeling over the 
mind. There are some mental constitutions that have a 
natural retentiveness for special emotions, just as there are 
intellects retentive of visible pictures, music, or language ; 
this retentiveness is not at all identical with the power of 
being moved by the full reality of an emotion. Such persons 
are peculiarly qualified to cultivate associated feeling, to derive 
pleasure from the relics and the memory of affection, and to 
make this pleasure an object of pursuit in life. All their 
actions that have reference to objects of special emotion 
become imbued with derived or associated feeling. 

The illustration for objects of hatred and aversion, and for 
all the outgoings of the irascible passion, would be almost 
parallel to the above. This passion connects itself with persons, 
with places, things, events, &c, and may be revived by objects 
that of themselves have no natural power to stir it up. We 
are apt to feel an aversion to places where we have suffered 
deep injuries, and to the unwitting instruments of calamity 
and wrong. There is a certain moral effort sometimes needed 
to prevent the passion of hatred from spreading too widely 
over collateral and indifferent things. Minds at once irascible 
and weak have generally an excessive amount of associated 
dislikes. 



398 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

Egotistic and selfish emotion diffuses itself over all matters 
related to self; and the objects that a man surrounds himself 
with come to reflect the sense of his dignity and importance. 
According as this feeling is indulged, associations grow up 
between it and a great variety of things. Possessions, office, 
the fruits of one's labour, the symbols of rank, are all over- 
grown with this connexion, and radiate the feelings of self- 
complacency and importance to the mind. The members of 
one's family are objects not simply of tender affection, but of 
affection and egotism combined. So with friends, and with 
all the objects of our habitual admiration. It is impossible to 
be in the constant practice of loving or admiring anything, 
without coming at last to connect the object with self; the 
disinterested regard that first attracts us to persons, becomes, 
by indulgence, interested affection. 

The pleasure of money is a remarkable instance of asso- 
ciated emotion. The sum total of purchasable enjoyments 
becomes linked in the mind with the universal medium of 
purchase, and this medium grows into an end of pursuit. In 
the first instance, we are stimulated by these other pleasures, 
but an affection is often generated at last for money itself. 
This transfer is brought about when we allow ourselves to be 
so engrossed with the pursuit of wealth, that we rarely advert 
to the remote ends or the purchasable pleasures ; the mind 
dwelling solely on the one object that measures the success of 
our endeavours. A moderate pursuit of gain, that leaves the 
mind free to dwell upon the pleasures and advantages that 
money is to bring, does not generate that intense affection for 
gold as an end which constitutes the extreme form of sordid 
avarice. 

49. Alisonian Theory of Beauty. — This celebrated doctrine 
precisely exemplifies the case of contiguous association now in 
hand, in so far as we are disposed to admit the applications 
that its author makes of it. That he has carried his theory 
of associated pleasure too far might, I think, be shown in 
numerous instances. We have already seen that all the senses 
yield us sensations that are in themselves pleasurable without 
refeience to any associated effect. There aie fragrant odours, 



ALISONIAN THEORY OF BEAUTY. 399 

sweet sounds, and pleasing effects of light and colour, in which 
the pleasure is owing to a direct and immediate action of the 
objects upon the organs of sense, and these pleasurable 
feelings never fail to be produced when we are in a condition 
to enjoy them. There would be nothing permanently or 
generally pleasing if we had not a certain number of such 
primary sources of enjoyment. 

The doctrine of Alison satisfactorily explains the strong 
effects often produced on our minds by sensations and objects 
in themselves indifferent or wholly unequal to those effects. 
A few instances of this nature may be quoted as true examples 
of borrowed or associated emotion. To take the case of 
sounds : ' All sounds/ says Mr. Alison, ' are in general 
SUBLIME, which are associated with ideas of great Power or 
Might ; the Noise of a Torrent ; the Fall of a Cataract ; the 
uproar of a Tempest ; the Explosion of Gunpowder ; the 
Dashing of the waves, &c/ Most of these sounds, however, 
are intrinsically impressive from their intensity and volume, 
and the effect that they have on the mind is not wholly due 
to association. The following is a better selection for the 
purpose in hand. ' That the Notes or Cries of some Animals, 
are Sublime, every one knows ; the Roar of the Lion, the 
Growling of Bears, the Howling of Wolves, the Scream of the 
Eagle, &c. In all those cases, those are the notes of animals 
remarkable for their strength, and formidable from their 
ferocity.' In like manner, the Author exemplifies associations 
with the feeling of Beauty, as follows : — ' The Bleating of a 
Lamb is beautiful in a fine day in spring ; the Lowing of a 
Cow at a distance, amid the scenery of a pastoral landscape in 
summer. The Call of a Goat among rocks is strikingly 
beautiful, as expressing wildness and independence. The 
Hum of the Beetle is beautiful on a fine summer evening, as 
appearing to suit the stillness and repose of that pleasing 
season. The Twitter of the Swallow is beautiful in the 
morning, and seems to be expressive of the cheerfulness 
of that time/ A similar illustration can be derived from 
Colours and appearances to the eye. The impressive emotion 
roused by the discharge of thunder can be evoked by the 



400 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

transient flash in the window, an effect in itself very trivial, 
but able to recal the grander features of the phenomenon, and 
through these the emotion that we call the sublime. The 
relics of a storm, seen in the disorder and wreck, recal the 
feeling impressed by the height of its fury. The language 
that describes such phenomena, when aptly used, can arouse 
the emotions purely by the force of association. In proportion 
to the strength of the emotion, or of that feature of it that 
arrests and engrosses the mental movements, is the firmness 
of the adhesive link between it and those various accessories. 
Hence the very great influence of an element of awe, in such 
cases. Terror in every form is an engrossing passion, and 
lends this power to all emotions that it mixes with. 

Alison extends the illustration of his doctrine to Forms 
and Motions as well as sounds and colours, and supplies 
examples in great abundance under all these heads. I believe 
he has here too in many instances put forward intrinsic effects 
as the effects of association, but, nevertheless, he has left no 
room for doubting that the associating principle operates 
largely in clothing indifferent objects with a power to raise 
emotion in the mind of the beholder. 

There is, I am satisfied, a primitive influence in Form to 
produce a certain amount of emotion of the kind that enters 
into the compositions of Art. Curved forms and winding 
movements yield of themselves a certain satisfaction through 
the muscular sensibility of the eye. Yet we must add to this 
original impressiveness an influence of association ; namely, 
the connexion of Ease and abandon with the curving line, and 
of Constraint with the straight line. The free movements of 
the arm make circular figures ; to draw a straight line requires 
a painful effort. 

In everything of the nature of a Tool or a machine, there 
are certain appearances that are pleasing to behold, as sug- 
gesting Fitness and Ease in their application to the end. A 
clear polish upon steel has this effect, while red rust is painful 
from the suggestion of a harsh grating action. So the absence 
of noise in the working of a machine gives us the agreeable 
feeling of smooth, easy action. 






READING OF EMOTIONAL EXPRESSION. 401 

Before passing from this subject, I may remark that there 
is a certain refining effect frequently produced by keeping the 
original cause of a feeling at a distance, and viewing it thus 
through a medium. Thus the sensation of healthy functions 
is one of our principal enjoyments; the hue and fulness that 
are the outward aspect of health are pleasurable by asso- 
ciation, and according to Alison are beautiful; the one degree 
of remove from direct consciousness converts a sensual plea- 
sure into a sentimental one. Waving corn-fields, heavy and 
ripe, are agreeable objects by association with the supply of 
our bodily wants, and the delight is refined upon by keeping 
at some distance the actual and ultimate sensations that give 
all the force to the appearance. A feeling that in the reality 
would be called by comparison gross and sensual, becomes 
sentimental when the mind has some intervening object to 
rest upon. 

50. The reading of Emotional expression. — An inte- 
resting case of associated feeling is our being able to interpret 
the signs of feeling in our fellow-beings, by which we are not 
merely made aware of their state of mind, but also derive a 
large amount of pleasurable and painful feeling in ourselves. 
The influence of the smile or the frown, so powerful in human 
life, is purely an associated influence. There is nothing in- 
trinsic in the lines and forms of feature displayed in the act 
of smiling to cause the pleasure occasioned by this manifes- 
tation. Incidentally fine forms and curves may be produced 
in a face, and there may be a display of beautiful tints over 
and above, but when these things occur they make so much 
additional pleasure, they do not originate the pleasing effect 
of the act itself. 

The meaning of a smile, together with the susceptibility 
to the cheering influence of it, are learnt among the early 
acquisitions of infancy. The child comes to see that this 
expression accompanies the substantial pleasures that need 
no association to give them their character. The smile of the 
parent, or of the nurse, means all the agreeables of food, dress, 
play, spectacle, excitement, society. The frown is as inva- 
riably connected with privation and pains. An enduring 

D D 



402 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

association thus obtains between one cast of feature and all 
the good things of life, and between another expression and 
the ills that human power can inflict; and hence the one is 
able to diffuse a gladdening influence, while the other tends 
to excite a feeling of depression and gloom. All through life 
we are subject to these influences of associated emotion. So 
there are tones of voice that in the same way can cause 
pleasure or pain by a power of suggestion. In this case, how- 
ever, there is a certain intrinsic efficacy in the tones usually 
adopted to convey the intended effect. For conveying love 
and approbation we choose our soft and gentle tones; for the 
opposite we are led both by passion and by choice to use 
tones that are painful and grating. I cannot discern any 
original or intrinsic difference of effect between pleased and 
angry features, but in vocal utterance there is a manifest 
suitability of some tones for pleasing expression, and of others 
for the reverse. 

There are many of our strong likings on the one hand, 
and strong antipathies on the other, that come under the 
class of reflected influences. The sight of blood affects some 
persons to fainting, which cannot be owing to anything in 
the mere appearance of it; apart from association, the rich 
scarlet hue would make this a really agreeable object to 
the eye. 

ASSOCIATIONS OF VOLITION. 

51. I have already adverted to the mistake committed by 
Reid in pronouncing the voluntary command of our limbs and 
other moving organs instinctive. If we observe the move- 
ments of infancy, we see plainly that for many months there 
is no such thing as a command of the active members in 
obedience to an aim or purpose present to the mind. An 
infant may have sufficient intelligence to form a wish, and be 
quite unable to execute the simplest movements for attaining 
the thing wished. A common example of this is the attempt 
to seize something with the hand, as a spoon ; we see the 
most awkward movements occurring, evidently from the entire 
want of any definite direction of the limbs at that stage. 






VOLUNTARY COMMAND OF THE MOVING ORGANS. 403 

This definite direction is acquired ; and the acquisition is the 
most laborious and difficult of all human attainments. The 
performance of the simple movements that we wish to per- 
form, is the basis of our acquirement of more complex move- 
merits at a subsequent stage ; but our first education is self- 
education. Until a child can of its own accord put its hand 
out and seize an object before its eyes, which for the first few 
months it cannot do, any attempt to direct it is in vain ; and 
until of its own accord it can move its own body as it sees 
something else moved, it has not begun to be an edu cable 
being. 

The voluntary command of the organs implies the following 
things, i st. The power of continuing or abating a present move- 
ment in obedience to a present feeling, as when the child sucks 
while the appetite is gratified, and ceases when satiety comes 
on. This is a primary fact of the human constitution ; it exists 
from the commencement of sentient life, and is not communi- 
cable by any known method. So far, therefore, Volition is an 
Instinct. 2ndly. The power of beginning a movement in 
order to heighten or abate a present feeling, as when the child 
directs its head and mouth to seize the nipple, and begins 
sucking. There may be a few instances of instinctive move- 
ments of this kind, but in general they are acquired, being 
determined by means of association. The coincidence of the 
movement and the feeling must be first accidental ; the move- 
ment springing up of its accord, and finding itself able to 
control the feeling, the two become after a time so firmly 
connected that the one suggests the other. Thus the move- 
ment of the eyes and head is at first spontaneous, but the 
agreeable feelings of light brought on by these movements 
prompt their continuance, and the pleasure gets to be asso- 
ciated with these movements ; whereupon when this feeling is 
present to the mind as a wish, it prompts the requisite exer- 
tions. Thus it is that a child learns to search out a light in a 
room in order to enjoy the maximum of the illumination ; it 
learns to turn its view to the fire, or the window, or some face 
that it has begun to recognise agreeably. Volition means, 
3rdly, the performance of some intermediate actions in order 

D D 2 



404 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

to gratify the sense ; as when things are seized with the hand 
in order to be carried to the mouth, and when animals, reco- 
gnising their food at a distance, set themselves to move forward 
to lay hold of it. These intermediate actions are most mani- 
festly the result of experience, in the human subject at least. 
The power of locomotion has first to be developed, and being 
put in exercise the exertion becomes associated with its various 
consequences, and among others that of bringing the indi- 
vidual within reach of the objects of its desires. 4-thly. The 
voluntary command of the organs means the power of Imita- 
tion, or of performing actions in consequence of seeing them 
performed. Here a link has to be established between a 
certain appearance to the eye and the movement of corre- 
sponding organs in the individual's self ; or in the case of 
vocal imitation, a sound is the antecedent of an utterance, 
each sound heard being associated with a distinct movement 
of the chest and larynx, under the proper attitudes of the 
mouth. It is not uncommonly supposed that imitation, both 
of actions and sounds, is instinctive ; but I believe the suppo- 
sition is incorrect. 5thly. Under volition we understand the 
power of moving our organs merely on the wish to see them 
moved ; as when I look at my hand, and will to raise it. 
Here a connexion is formed between the sensible appearance 
of any member, or the idea left by that sensible appearance, 
and its being moved. Lastly, we can make a movement on 
being directed to do so by naming the part ; ' up head/ ' down 
hands/ &c. This is a further association, formed between 
certain names or sounds and a particular class of movements. 
All these various actions are employed in the most elementary 
efforts of the will to control the body. Others could be 
named that transcend their range of influence, as, for ex- 
ample, the control of the passions and the command of the 
thoughts.* 

* The following are notes of observations made upon the earliest move' 
nients of two lambs seen during the first hour after birth, and at subsequent 
stages of their development. The two came from the same mother, and 
their actions were in the main alike. 

One of the lambs on being dropped was taken hold of by the shepherd 
and laid on the ground so as to rest on its four knees. For a very short time, 



ACQUISITION OF VOLUNTAEY POWER. 405 

52. In order to illustrate the acquired character of these 
several voluntary actions, excepting always the first, I shall 
select the case of Imitation. If we can prove to satisfaction 



perhaps not much above a minute, it kept still in this attitude. A certain 
force was doubtless exerted to enable it to retain this position ; but the first 
decided exertion of the creature's own energy was shown in standing up on 
its legs, which it did after the pause of little more than a minute. The 
power thus put forth I can only describe as a spontaneous burst of the 
locomotive energy, under this condition, namely, that as all the four limbs 
were actuated at the same instant, the innate power must have been guided 
into this quadruple channel in consequence of that nervous organization 
that constitutes the four limbs one related group. The animal now stood on 
its legs, the feet being considerably apart so as to widen the base of support. 
The energy that raised it up continued flowing in order to maintain the 
standing posture, and the animal doubtless had the consciousness of such a 
flow of energy, as its earliest mental experience. This standing posture 
was continued for a minute or two in perfect stillness. Next followed the 
beginnings of locomotive movement. At first a limb was raised and set 
down again, then came a second movement that widened the animal's base 
Avithout altering its position. When a more complex movement with two 
limbs came on, the effect seemed to be to go sideways ; another complex 
movement led forwards ; but at the outset there appeared to be nothing to 
decide one direction rather than another, for the earliest movements were a 
jumble of side, forward, and backward, Still, the alternation of limb 
that any consecutive advance required seemed within the power of the 
creature during the first ten minutes of life. Sensation as yet could be of 
very little avail, and it was evident that action took the start in the animal's 
history. The eyes were wide open, and light must needs have entered to 
stimulate the brain. The contact with the solid earth and the feelings of 
weight and movement were the earliest feelings. In this state of uncertain 
wandering with little change of place, the lamb was seized hold of and 
carried up to the side of the mother. This made no difference till its nose 
was brought into contact with the woolly skin of the dam, which originated 
a new sensation. Then came a conjunction manifestly of the volitional 
kind. There was clearly a tendency to sustain this contact, to keep the 
nose rubbing upon the side and belly of the ewe. Finding a certain move- 
ment to have this effect, that movement was sustained ; exemplifying what 
I consider the primitive or fundamental fact of volition. Losing the 
contact, there was as yet no power to recover it by a direct action, for the 
indications of sight at this stage had no meaning. The animal's spon- 
taneous irregular movements were continued ; for a time they were quite 
fruitless, until a chance contact came about again, and this contact could 
evidently sustain the posture or movement that was causing it. The whole 
of the first hour was spent in these various movements about the mother, 
there being in that short time an evident increase of facility in the various 
acts of locomotion and in commanding the head in such a way as to keep 
up the agreeable touch. A second hour was spent much in the same 
manner ; and in the course of the third hour, the animal, which had been 
entirely left to itself, came upon the teat, and got this into its mouth. 
The spontaneous workings of the mouth now yielded a new sensation, 
whereby they were animated and sustained, and unexpectedly the creature 
found itself in the possession of a new pleasure ; the satisfaction first of 



406 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

that this is not instinctive, but acquired, little doubt will remain 
on the other cases. 

The imitations practised in early life are, first, the vocal, 
led by the ear, — speech, song, and cadence ; secondly, the 
external organs led by the eye, — the hands, feet, trunk, head, 
and mouth ; and thirdly, the features, which we are longer in 
acquiring a command over. I speak not at present either of 
the complex case of dramatic imitation and mimicry, or of the 
sympathies with emotion, as in laughter, tears, &c. 

(i.) The first argument against instinctive imitation is the 
fact that no imitation whatever takes place during the first 
few months of infant existence. So far as my observation 
goes, there is very little during the first year. But a primitive 
impulse ought to show itself much earlier than this. The 
instinctive movements discussed in the preceding Book show 



mouthing the object — next, by-and-bye, the pleasure of drawing milk ; the 
intensity of this last feeling would doubtless give an intense spur to the 
co-existing movements, and keep them energetically at work. A new and 
grand impression was thus produced, remaining after the fact, and stimu- 
lating exertion and pursuit in order to recover it. 

Six or seven hours after birth the animal had made notable progress. 
Locomotion was easy, the forward movement being preferred, but not pre- 
dominant. The sensations of sight began to have a meaning. In less 
than twenty-four hours, the animal could at the sight of the mother ahead, 
move in the forward direction at once to come up to her, showing that a par- 
ticular visible image had now been associated with a definite movement ; the 
absence of any such association being most manifest in the early move- 
ments of life It could proceed at once to the teat and suck, guided only 
by its desire and the sight of the object. It was now in the full exercise of 
the locomotive faculty ; and very soon we could see it moving with the nose 
along the ground in contact with the grass, the preliminary of seizing the 
blades in the mouth. 

I am not able to specify minutely the exact periods of the various 
developments in the self- education of those two lambs, but the above are 
correct statements to the best of my recollection. The observations proved 
distinctly these several points, namely, first, the existence of spontaneous 
action as the earliest fact in the creature's history ; second, the absence of 
any definite bent prior to experienced sensations ; and third, the power of a 
sensation actually experienced to keep up the coinciding movement of the 
time, thereby constituting a voluntary act in the initial form. What was 
also very remarkable, was the rate of acquisition, or the rapidity with which 
all the associations between sensations and actions became fixed. A 
power that the creature did not at all possess naturally got itself matured 
as an acquisition in a few hours ; before the end of a week the lamb was 
capable of almost anything belonging to its sphere of existence ; and at the 
lapse of a fortnight, no difference could be seen between it and the aged 
members of the flock. 



IMITATION AN ACQUISITION. 407 

themselves from the very commencement of life. There is no 
new development or manifestation of power at the time 
when the imitative propensity comes on ; there is nothing- 
parallel to the physical changes that show themselves at 
puberty along with the new feelings of that period. The 
child is seen to go through a great deal of active exertion of 
its own in the course of those unimitative months ; the power 
of repeating the actions of others would be exceedingly valuable 
at this time, and would save much fruitless endeavour ; but in 
truth, the very faintest tendency in this direction cannot be 
discerned for nearly a whole year after birth. There may be 
instances of a more precocious faculty than any that I have 
observed, but these would not affect in any material degree 
the present argument. 

(2.) In the second place, imitation, when it does begin, is 
slow and gradual in its progress ; a fact that looks like acqui- 
sition, and not like Instinct. We find, for example, that in 
speech the imitation is at first limited to one or two articu- 
lations, and that others come on by degrees at considerable 
intervals. If there were any primitive connexion in the brain 
between a sound heard, and the reproduction of that sound 
with the voice, it ought to be as good for one letter of the 
alphabet as for another. So with the movement of the hand ; 
why should one be possible while no amount of example will 
bring out another, not in itself more difficult? 

(3.) The imitation very often fails after it has once been 
hit. A child has caught a certain sound, and will at par- 
ticular times produce it, and yet at other times there may be 
no possibility of bringing on the utterance. This is constantly 
seen in the first efforts of children. It is in vain that we 
repeat in their ear a sound, a letter, or a syllable that they 
have shown themselves able to pronounce ; the association 
between the audible impression and the specific vocal exertion 
has plainly not yet been formed ; it cannot therefore be 
instinctive. The child has in the course of its spontaneous 
articulate movements come on the sound hum, and this sound 
once pronounced is likely to recur in the cycle of its sponta- 
neous actions, but to utter the syllable at the instance of 



408 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

another person's utterance is something additional. As an 
acquisition, I can easily render to myself an account of the 
process. The sound spoken is also heard ; besides the vocal 
exertion there is a coincident impression on the ear ; an asso- 
ciation grows up between the exertion and the sensation, and 
after a sufficient time the one is able to recal the other. The 
sensation anyhow occurring brings on the exertion ; and when 
by some other person's repeating the syllable, the familiar 
sound is heard, the corresponding vocal act will follow. Expe- 
rience, I think, proves that the time that elapses between the 
ability to utter a sound, and the readiness to utter it on its 
being heard, corresponds to the time requisite for an adhesion 
to grow up between two heterogeneous elements, the one a 
spontaneous action, the other a sensation. These early sounds 
come out more frequently of themselves than under the 
stimulus of imitation, which proves that the exertion precedes 
the power of imitating. 

To assert that imitation is instinctive, is to maintain the 
existence of an infinity of pre-existing associations between 
sensations and actions. Every letter of the alphabet, and 
every word, would require to be connected by a primitive 
adhesion with the movements of the larynx and mouth, 
whereby they are uttered. Every movement of the hand 
would need to be associated with the visible appearances of 
the same movement in other human beings. We should 
have to affirm the manifest absurdity that associations could 
be formed between things yet unexperienced ; between sounds, 
and sights, and actions, long before anything had been heard, 
seen, or done. 

(4.) It is notorious to observation, that more is done by 
the nurse imitating the child, than by the child imitating the 
nurse. When an articulation is stumbled on, it is caught up 
by all around, and the child is made familiar with the sound 
as proceeding from other voices, in addition to its own. This 
would obviously promote the growth of the needful adhesive 
connexion. 

(5.) Imitation follows the spontaneous displays of activity, 
and is greatest in cases where the spontaneous variety and 



POWER OF IMITATION PROGRESSIVE. 409 

flexibility are good. A child will learn to imitate singing 
according as, of its own accord, it falls into musical notes. 
Its own native song must come first: the goodness of that 
will be a condition of its acquiring the song of others. In 
whatever department any individual shows spontaneous and 
unprompted facility, in that department will the same indi- 
vidual be imitative or acquisitive. This makes the connexion 
between native parts and high acquirements in everything, — 
mechanical skill, fine art, business, science. 

(6.) Imitation progresses with the acquired habits. In 
learning to dance, the deficiency of the association between 
the pupil's movements and the sight of the master's, renders 
the first steps difficult to acquire. The desired movements 
are not naturally performed at the outset. Some movements 
are made; sufficient voluntary command of the limbs and 
body has been acquired, in other shapes, to set a-going action 
of some kind; but the first actions are seen to be quite 
wrong; there is a manifest want of coincidence, which origi- 
nates a new attempt, and that failing, another is made, until 
at last we see that the posture is hit. The grand process of 
trial and error brings on the first coincidence between a 
movement and the appearance of that movement in another 
person; while repetition of the coincidence leads to a cohesion 
sufficient to render the imitation perfectly easy. Upon this 
acquisition other new acquisitions of the same kind are based, 
and the improvement is accelerating. Thus it is that we 
pass through an alphabet of imitation in all arts ; the fixing 
of the association, in the case of the first links, is the most dif- 
ficult part of the process. 

(7.) It is in harmony with all that has now been advanced, 
that imitation depends likewise on the delicacy of the sense 
that perceives the effect. A fine and retentive musical ear is 
one of the essentials of musical imitation; the natural or 
spontaneous production of musical tones being the other 
essential. The delicacy of the ear means its discriminative 
power; the retentiveness includes the power of forming asso- 
ciations with the voice, or any other mechanical effort. A 
delicate appreciation of the positions of the fugleman, and a 



410 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

tenacious retention of that class of impressions, helps the 
recruit forward in his imitative exercises. 

This is not the place to exhaust the subject of Imitation 
in particular, or of the acquisitions that enter into volition in 
general. It is enough, for the present, to show that the 
associative principle is an indispensable requisite here as 
elsewhere. All the conditions already specified, as affecting 
the rate of adhesiveness in other acquirements, might be 
exemplified likewise in these. The great peculiarity in their 
case arises from the circumstances of their commencement. 
Being the starting point of every other branch of education, 
they must find their own way through struggles and acci- 
dents, trials and failures. Reposing upon the great funda- 
mental link between consciousness and present action, — 
between pleasure or pain, and the activity happening at the 
time, — they come at last to supply definite connexions between 
our feelings and exertions, so as to enable us not merely to 
control a movement at work, but to call dormant actions into 
being at the instance of our reigning emotion. 

Of the various circumstances affecting the progress of these 
volitional associations, the engagement of the cerebral energy 
or concentrated attention is of signal consequence. This con- 
dition, necessary at any age, seems the all-important one in 
the early months of our existence. The moment of an acqui- 
sition seems generally to turn upon some happy concurrence 
of aroused attention or mental engrossment with the action : 
an impression not detained for a time by the influence of 
some feeling is void of effect. When the child hits upon an 
exercise that gives it pleasure, and is thereby led to repeat 
the act, earnestly and intently, the occasion is sure to be a 
good one for a sensible advance in fixing the whole connected 
train. The first discovery of being able to blow with the 
mouth, and set light objects in motion, would be an instance 
of what I mean. 



411 



NATURAL OBJECTS — AGGREGATES OF NATURAL QUALITIES. 

53. One of the principal forms of human intelligence con- 
sists in a permanent hold of the external world as it strikes 
the senses. The more perfectly we can anticipate the appear- 
ances of nature while they are yet out of sight, the better 
able are we to calculate our way and regulate our actions. 

External objects usually affect us through a plurality of 
senses. The pebble on the sea shore is pictured on the eye 
as form and colour. We take it up in the hand and repeat 
the impression of form, with the additional feeling of touch. 
Knock two together, and there is a characteristic sound. To 
preserve the impression of an object of this kind, there must 
be an association of all these different effects. Such association, 
when matured and firm, is our idea, our intellectual grasp of 
the pebble. 

Passing to the organic world, and plucking a rose, we have 
the same effects of form to the eye and hand, colour and 
touch, with the new effects of odour and taste. A certain 
time is requisite for the coherence of all these qualities in one 
aggregate, so as to give us for all purposes the enduring image 
of the rose. When fully acquired any one of the character- 
istic impressions will revive the others ; the odour, the sight, 
the feeling of the thorny stalk, — each of these by itself will 
hoist the entire impression into the view. Should we go to 
work and dissect the flower botanical ly, we shall obtain new 
impressions to enter into the common aggregate. 

The rapid association of these qualities, the quick adhesion 
of the sensations of sight, touch, &c, into an intellectual pro- 
duct, enables us to acquire a large stock of impressions cor- 
responding to mineral and vegetable bodies. This is the gift 
of the naturalist, who, having to retain in his mind many 
hundreds or thousands of distinct notions, must not put off 
time in the work of acquisition. In him the sensations of 
sight and touch must be vigorous and enduring. Mere colour 
and its varieties must make an abiding impression ; unmeaning 
shapes also must be easily remembered. The persistence of 



412 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

visual and tangible impressions must be high, and the force of 
adhesiveness naturally good in his case. He cannot afford a 
high tension of mind upon each object, owing to the great 
variety of things to be attended to, and hence the force of 
contiguity must be considerable in the absence of any stimulus 
beyond a quiet interest in the subject. What is called good 
observing faculties must belong to the character of the natu- 
ralist ; which means a high activity in the organs of sense, a 
persistent energy in the centres that sustain the movements 
of the eye, the hand, and the locomotive powers. To keep up 
the activity of these organs for a long stretch of time demands 
a peculiar nervous organization. When the tendency of the 
mental force is in this direction, the examination of sensible 
objects — minerals, plants, animals, &c, is a spontaneous and 
enduring effort, and this of itself would cause a rapid and 
extensive acquisition of the impressions of outward things. 
The observation ever fresh and buoyant, the firmness of the 
visible and tactile sensations, mark, not the naturalist mind 
only, but also the minds of all classes that have much to do 
with the external world in its fulness, among whom we may 
rank the man of industry, the military commander, and the 
poet. In an article of food, — an orange, a piece of bread, 
water, wine, — we have an additional susceptibility which com- 
mands a strong interest and attention, rendering the impres- 
sion easily retained. This gives these objects an advantage 
over the objects of the world in general ; they are, so to speak, 
less disinterested, and do not put the plastic retentiveness of 
the mind so well to the test. Again, if the objects have that 
more than common interest that we call artistic or poetic, the 
interest of beauty and taste, they attract a greater amount of 
mental regard, and are for that reason sooner brought to the 
point of coherence and easy retentiveness. This, too, gives a 
select class of objects a special superiority in the power of 
engraining themselves in the recollection ; and in minds 
strongly alive to beauty, these objects start forward into pro- 
minence and endurance, while others are unheeded and for- 
gotten. The naturalist must be above all such partialities ; to 
him every natural object must possess a moderate interest, 



POWER OF RETAINING SENSIBLE AGGREGATES. 413 

and no class more than a fair share ; it is only by this modera- 
tion that he can keep his mind equal to the multitude and 
variety of nature. The same character of vigorous and per- 
sistent observation and ready adhesiveness at a moderate 
tension of mind must belong to all minds that have to deal 
with a great variety of objects, as, for example, the geographer 
and the verbal scholar. Some objects excite the senses in a 
vivid and excessive manner, and thus engross mental attention 
in their favour. Thus it is that we have clear impressions of 
flame, of ice, of a bell, a piece of sugar, &c. 

54. From the objects of the world thus apprehended as 
they strike the immediate sense, we pass to a higher group of 
aggregates, — things with properties not always present to the 
view. For example, a cup in its completeness must be con- 
ceived as containing something, as serving this purpose or use. 
We have to associate with the permanent sensible qualities 
this other quality of usefulness for an end, which has a special 
interest in it to quicken our retentiveness of the entire total. 
Furniture and tools and implements of every description have 
this superadded quality, which, however, instead of burdening 
the memory, rather lightens it by the spur of a special interest. 
All related objects are more easily fixed in the mind than 
those that are unrelated, particularly if the relation be an 
interesting one. A monarch is more impressive than a man ; 
a millstone is more firmly remembered than a useless block 
on a moor. Where the interest in industrial production is 
naturally high in an individual, every kind of machine arrests 
the regards and takes time to impress itself. We have here 
another example of that select or special attention which con- 
centrates the mind upon some things to the neglect of others, 
and is also in strong contrast with the catholic tendencies of the 
naturalist character. Not only is there a restriction as regards 
the objects in the narrow point of view, but the proj)erties 
attended to are more limited. If a tool has a good edge, its 
specific gravity is a matter of indifference ; if a quarry yields 
good building stone, the owner leaves it to others to determine 
its mineral composition and geological era. 



414 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 



NATURAL AND HABITUAL CONJUNCTIONS— STILL LIFE. 

55. The things about us that maintain fixed places and 
relations become connected in idea as they are in reality, and 
the mind thus takes on a phantasmagoric representation of 
our habitual environment. The house we live in, with its 
furniture and fittings, the street, town, or rural scene that we 
encounter daily, — by their incessant iteration cohere into 
abiding .recollections, and any one part easily brings all the 
rest into the view. These familiar haunts exemplify the 
highest degree of pictorial adhesion that we can ever attain to, 
being impressed by countless repetitions and strong natural 
interest. We likewise associate a number of human beings 
with their abodes, dresses, avocations, and all other constant 
accompaniments. 

Objects at a distance from our daily circle afford the best 
opportunity of trying the adhesiveness of the mind for ex- 
tended pictures. A house we have visited only once or twice, 
a strange street, a new scene, will put to the test the visual 
persistence of the character. This case resolves itself partly 
into the case of coloured impressions, and partly into that of 
visual forms, the tenacity for colour being the essential point. 
A coloured decoration is quite irrecoverable if the sense of 
colour is not very powerful ; the same may be said of a 
heterogeneous and formless collection of ornaments or curi- 
osities. The recollection of dresses turns principally upon the 
hold we have of colour. The interior of a room implies form, 
and may be retained as such ; but if the sense of colour is 
indifferent, it will be revived only in outline. A garden, a 
shrubbery, an array of fields, rely very much upon the coloured 
element. The more irregular the outlines of things are, the 
more do we depend upon our tenacity of coloured impressions 
to make them cohere. 

For the easy retention of the variegated imagery of the 
world about us in all its richness, a powerful adhesiveness 
of colour is the first requisite. Whether this adhesiveness 
and persistence is a property of the eye and its nerve centres, 



THE NATURALIST AND THE POET. 4J 5 

or of the cerebrum generally, I cannot say ; but wherever it 
occurs it is a powerful determining circumstance of the cha- 
racter. It gives to the mind a pictorial character, an attraction 
for the concrete of nature, with all the interests that hang 
upon it. We have just seen that it is one of the qualifications 
of the naturalist ; it is also the general basis of character in 
the painter and poet, for although both these have to select 
from the multitude of appearances such of them as have an 
interest in art, yet it is well that they should easily keep a 
hold of anything that presents itself to the eye, whether beau- 
tiful or not. A luxuriant imagination proceeds on the facility 
of retaining scenes of every description ; nothing less could 
sustain the flow of our greatest poets. Although all objects 
are not beautiful or picturesque, yet there is hardly any 
appearance that may not come in well in some composition, 
and the poet-painter ought to be a person of strong disin- 
terested retentiveness for everything that falls on his view. 
Any one stopping short at this point would be a naturalist 
simply ; but when the poetic sense is added to lay a special 
stress upon the beautiful, grand, or touching objects, the 
naturalist passes into the artist. A strong artistic sense, 
without the broad disinterested hold of nature's concretes in 
general, may make a man a genuine or even an exquisite 
artist, but thin and meagre in his conce]:)tions ; great taste 
with feeble invention. Instances both of this and of the 
opposite coincidence — richness without delicacy — occur in all 
the fine arts. 

It will thus appear that no great difference obtains be- 
tween the last head and the present, as regards the faculty at 
work. The aggregate of impressions in a single mineral, or 
plant, is made coherent by the same force of growth that 
groups these individuals together into the totals that make up 
the face of nature. In the latter case we are more completely 
dependent on impressions of sight ; in the others, tactual 
inspection often enters, but even in these, sight forms our 
principal hold and medium of discrimination. Between the 
apple that appeals to every sense and yields a complex notion 
made up of all, and the starry heavens that affect the eye 



416 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

alone, there is less of intellectual difference than there seems 
for even the apple is retained in the mind principally as ar 
object of sight. 

$6. Among the greater aggregates implied under the 
present head I may include those artificial representations 
intended to aid the conception of the outer world, as, for 
example, maps, and diagrams, and pictorial sketches. A very 
great utility is served by these devices, and much intellectual 
power and practical skill depend on our being able to associate 
and retain them. The geography of the globe is summed up 
in an artificial globe or a set of maps, with outline, shade, and 
colour, to correspond with the differences of sea and land, 
mountain and plain. There are very great differences among 
individuals in the hold that they take of a map, with all the infor- 
mation it conveys. It appears to me that a good adhesiveness 
for colour is the important element in a case of this kind, just 
as in the recollection of the actual surface of a country. It is 
a case of that easy retentiveness of a great multitude of im- 
pressions, that contrasts with the severe hold of a few selected 
ones ; an extensive rather than an intensive mind. Next to 
a map we may class natural history sketches, which contain a 
great variety of appearance depending mainly upon differences 
of colour. Anatomical diagrams and machinery are much of 
the same nature, but incline to the diagrams of abstract 
science, where attention has to be strongly concentrated on 
narrow points. When we come to the figures of Euclid, colour 
entirely disappears as an element ; the pictorial retentiveness 
above descanted on is of no avail. Form is everything, and 
that form is not various but limited, and exceedingly im- 
portant. This illustrates by contrast the power of seizing 
nature's aggregates and concretes, where thousands of distinct 
impressions must fall into their places and cohere with ease 
and in a short time. A crowded theatre and the forty-seventh 
of Euclid are equally objects to the eye, and also to the con- 
ceiving mind when they are gone ; but the region of the brair 
that determines the adhesiveness must be quite different in 
the two cases ; in the one, colour and variegated form, in the 
other, a few regular forms with absence of colour. The pos- 



OBJECTS, WITH THEIR SCIENTIFIC PROPERTIES. 417 

session of this last class of objects is an example of the intensive 
adhesiveness required in the abstract sciences. 

57. There is an interesting class of artificial conjunctions, 
wherein the obvious appearances of things are associated with 
other appearances brought out by manipulation and experi- 
ment. The properties of a mineral, the complete notion that 
we can attain respecting it, are a combination of the sight 
and touch with the artificial aspects made by a scratch, 
a fracture, the blowpipe, the application of an acid, the 
measurement of the angles. A complex impression is thus 
made up and, by repetition, stamped on the mind ; and at an 
after time, any one of the characteristic properties will revive 
the total conception of the mineral. So in chemistry, each 
substance is conceived not simply as seen and handled by 
itself, but as acted on by many other substances, by changes 
of temperature and the like. The chemist's notion of sulphur 
is a large aggregate of appearances and sensations produced in 
various ways; it is, in fact, the notion of a great collection of sub- 
stances — the compounds of sulphur — as odour of burnt brim- 
stone, oil of vitriol, salts of sulphuric acid, compounds of sulphur 
with metals, &c. In like manner, the properties of a plant are 
not completely summed up and aggregated in the mind, till 
in addition to all the aspects it presents by itself, other plants 
are taken along with it, as of the same species, genus, and 
family. These cases are nearly parallel to an example oc- 
curring under the immediately preceding head, namely, tools 
and machinery, where the present aspect has to be augmented 
with other appearances manifested when they are put to their 
practical uses. 

In these mineral and chemical aggregates there is great 
scope for proving the force of contiguous association, but still 
more for testing the disposition to dwell upon artificial com- 
binations, the results of previous analysis or forced separation 
of natural conjunctions. Science, as I shall afterwards have 
occasion to illustrate, is painful from the necessity of dis-asso- 
ciating appearances that go naturally and easily together, of 
renouncing the full and total aspect of an object by which it 
engages agreeably the various senses, and of settling upon some 

E E 



418 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

feature that has no interest to the common eye. Those com- 
pounds of sulphur that have to be conjoined with the simple 
substance as a part of its idea, are constantly viewed by the 
chemist under the one aspect of composition or decompo- 
sition in the contact with other bodies; the appearance of any 
single substance to the eye signifies nothing, and may be wholly 
irrelevant to any purpose of his. 

SUCCESSIONS. 

58. If we except complex and coinciding muscular move- 
ments, and the concurrence of sensations through different 
senses at the same moment, all associations are successive 
to the mind, seeing that we must pass from the one to the 
other, both in the original experience and in the subsequent 
recollection. The features of a landscape can be conceived 
only by successive movements of the mind, as it can be 
seen only by successive movements of the eye. But I here 
contrast the successions, movements, events, and changes of 
the world, with still life, the status quo, or the contempo- 
raneous aspect of nature, and I mean now to allude to the 
procession of the universe in time, as a consequence of the 
properties of movement and change impressed upon it. 

We may notice first the successions that go round in a cycle, 
without shock or interruption, as day and night, the phases of 
the moon, the course of the seasons. The different aspects 
presented by the sky above and the world around, in the 
course of the solar day, are associated in our minds in their 
regular order, and anticipated accordingly. This cyclical asso- 
ciation makes up one part of our knowledge, or experience, of 
the world, and guides our actions in accordance with it. These 
slow and tranquil changes become coherent under almost the 
very same conditions as the aspects of still life that we view 
in succession by moving from place to place. The two cases 
are very different in themselves, but to the mind the contem- 
poraneous in reality is the successive in idea. The chief 
distinction lies in this, that the flow of moving nature is 






SUCCESSIONS OF EVOLUTION. 419 

associated in one constant direction; whereas the succession 
of still nature is backward and forward in various directions. 
But the same mental adhesiveness that can embrace the one, 
will with equal facility embrace the other. 

A second class, under the present head, is comprised by- 
successions of evolution, as the development of a plant, or 
animal, through all its stages, from the germ to the decadence. 
The associations of these, as they occur in nature, make up our 
knowledge of the history of living things. The peculiarity of 
this case is the continuity and identity of the main subject, 
and the likeness that prevails in the midst of change. Both 
these circumstances assist in impressing the different stages 
upon the recollection. If we have already formed an en- 
during picture of a fir sapling, we have not much difficulty in 
conceiving the same merely expanded in dimensions, the form 
and texture remaining the same ; and so with any other plant 
or animal. Where a creature undergoes a radical trans- 
formation, as a butterfly, or a frog, we have to conjoin two 
different appearances, and are therefore not so ready to retain 
the succession. In reality, however, the stages of evolution are 
more frequently learned by seeing them altogether on dif- 
ferent subjects, as in a plantation of trees, or in the mixture 
of all ages in human society. The evolution of living beings, 
plants, or animals, in their growth and decay, usually excites 
a strong and interested attention, which operates in fixing the 
successive stages in the recollection. The same happens in 
historical evolutions, and it is particularly aimed at in the 
artificial evolutions of the drama and the romance. There is 
also a strong interest attached to the successive stages of a 
constructive operation, a process in the arts, a case in a court 
of law, or the course of a disease. A mind naturally adhesive 
to sensible impressions would, as a matter of course, acquire 
out of its opportunities of observation a large store of these 
successions, but the bent of interest concentrating the mind 
upon some, in preference to others, is perhaps the most opera- 
tive circumstance. One man is engrossed with the progress 
of the field and the garden, from the seed to the fruit; 

E E 2 



420 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

another looks with especial eye to the human development 
in body or in mind. The romantic interest seizes all classes, 
and fixes with ease the successions of a plot or story. 

Apart from this circumstance of special interest in the 
unwinding of the future, the associations of evolution are not 
materially different from the conjunctions of still life, these 
being also unavoidably successive. The pages of a book, or 
the houses of a street, exist contemporaneously, but cannot be 
viewed otherwise than successively. The mind formed to 
associate with little repetition the flowers of the same garden- 
plot, can likewise retain the different phases of the growing 
plant. The lapse of time between the different views may 
occur when things are contemporaneous no less than when 
they succeed one another. 

59. Relating to the recovery of trains of imagery there is 
a fact of the nervous system to be attended to ; namely, that 
a mental movement once set on tends to persevere and feed 
itself. We can remark in the eye a tendency to continue in 
any motion once commenced, as in following a projectile, or 
sweeping round the sky line that bounds a prospect. The 
spontaneous vigour of the moving organs carries them forward 
in any direction that they may chance to enter on; and, in addi- 
tion to the spontaneity of the active system, the stimulus of 
the sensation itself operates in sustaining a movement that has 
been commenced. Thus it is that the eye so naturally follows 
out a vista, or traces the course of a stream. Seeing the 
beginning of a straight line, or the fraction of a circle, we feel 
ourselves led on to the conception of other parts hidden from 
the view. A tall spire carries the regards upwards far into the 
heights beyond itself, while a descending current gives a 
downward direction to the bodily or mental eye. Just as we 
acquire an almost mechanical persistence in walking, or in 
handling a tool when once under way, so the sight falls into a 
given movement and goes on of its own accord along the line 
that has been chalked out for it. When our eye sweeps along 
the line of a procession, it acquires such a persevering tendency 
that it is apt to go beyond the termination until its view in 
that direction is completely exhausted. When a succession of 



& 



SUCCESSIONS OF CAUSE AND EFFECT. 421 

objects is very rapid,, as in a railway train, it sometimes 
impresses a diseased persistence on the visual circles, and we 
feel the dizzying sensation of everything about us being still in 
motion. Like all the other actions of the brain, this persist- 
ency has a moderate and healthy pace, which easily subsides, 
and a hurried or diseased pace that we cannot check without 
great difficulty. 

Now in the operation of recalling the steps or members of 
a succession at the prompting of those that go before, our 
recollection is aided by this tendency to go forward, or to leap 
from the one at present in the view to the next in order. This 
restless forward impulse, in some constitutions very strong, will 
not suffice of itself to recal the next member without an 
adequate adhesive growth between it and the preceding, but it 
counts for something in the act of recovering any object that 
we are in want of in that particular train. It determines very 
much the degree of rapidity of the mental action ; and from 
this circumstance gives a very marked character to the indi- 
vidual. It does not confer intellectual power, — this depends 
on the proper forces of the intellect — but it favours prompt- 
ness and quickness in perceiving whatever it is within our 
power to perceive, a quality often useful in the emergencies of 
life. This attribute of mental movements whereby they are 
enabled to sustain themselves, is to be looked upon as one of 
the properties of the volitional energy of the brain. 

60. The successions designated as Cause and Effect, are 
fixed in the mind by Contiguity. The simplest case of this 
connexion is that where our own actions are causes. We 
strike a blow, and a noise succeeds, with a fracture. The 
voluntary energy put forth in the act becomes thenceforth 
associated with the sound or the breakage. It may be 
remarked that hardly any bond of association comes sooner to 
maturity than the bond between our own actions and the 
sensible effects that follow from them. There are reasons for 
such unusual rapidity of growth ; certain circumstances can be 
mentioned that favour the concentration of the mind upon this 
particular sequence. 

In the first place, these effects are often themselves 



I 



422 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 



energetic, startling, and impressive. This is indicated by the 
employment of the word ' effect ' to mean what yields a strong 
sensation, something that takes the mind by storm, and 
excludes for the time all other objects of attention. The 
stronger kinds are those that produce some startling change in 
the still routine of things. The firing of a cannon in the quiet 
of the night ; the shattering of a window ; the upsetting of a 
table covered with crockery ; the kindling of a conflagration ; 
the taking away of a life, — are all intensely exciting to the 
nervous system ; and the excitement takes the particular form 
of engrossing the entire action of the mind for a length of 
time. It becomes difficult to form any other adhesions at such 
a moment ; the wits are occupied in the direction given by the 
violent stimulus. One single occasion is sufficient to connect 
in the mind for ever one of these startling events with its 
immediate antecedent or cause. According as the effects are 
milder in their character, their connexion with the causes is 
less speedily established in the circles of the brain. But as a 
general rule, causation, when distinctly apparent, — that is, 
when the two or more members of the succession are clearly 
ascertained and contemplated by the mind, — impresses itself 
much more easily than the successions of things in a sweep of 
landscape, or the stages of vegetable or animal life. There is 
in man a natural liking for effects, owing to the mental 
stimulus they give ; and much of the pleasure of life is made 
up of this kind of excitement. 

But we must remark, in the second place, that the active 
impulses of human nature, which are in many instances the 
causes of the effects we see, and are assumed as the type of all 
other causes, are very easily impressed on the mind as per- 
manent ideas ; that is to say, it is easy to recal the notion of 
any action of ours that has been concerned in producing a 
startling change. Our moving members being always with us, 
their movements are the most familiar facts that we possess ; 
it is easy to remember a kick, a wrench, or any other common 
action. Hence in a succession of two steps, one a familiar 
action of our own, the other a striking effect on our senses, 
the first is already formed into a permanent idea by repetition, 



ACTION AND REACTION OF LIVING BEINGS. 423 

and the second arrests a powerful current of attention, and 
the fixing of the two is therefore comparatively rapid and 
sure. Unfamiliar actions as causes are not readily remem- 
bered ; hence effects of intricate construction and mechanism 
do not impress themselves without due repetition. 

In imagining the causes of unknown effects, human power 
is the first thing to suggest itself from the facility the mind 
has of entering into this cause, and also from the pleasure 
derived by the very idea of human energy put forth in the 
accomplishment of effects. The universal tendency to per- 
sonify all the powers of nature has its origin in this circum- 
stance ; and is a confirming illustration of what I have been 
endeavouring to enforce in the present paragraph. 

6 1. The action and reaction of one man on another is a 
notable example of cause and effect, under circumstances 
favourable to an impressive recollection. In this cast 1 , both 
the cause and the effect are human manifestations, readily 
conceivable from the fact that we ourselves have been fre- 
quently actuated in the same way. When we witness, for 
example, an encounter of hostility, both the provocation and 
the retort are actions that we can completely realize from our 
own past experience. Here, too, as in the cases above noted, 
the rousing of a human being from quiescence to animation, is 
a startling effect which arrests and impresses the beholder. 
Most persons are susceptible to these sudden changes in 
the expression of living beings ; they constitute a great part 
of our interest in society and in the drama. By noting those 
various movements of expression in connexion with the 
causes of them, we become impressed with innumerable 
sequences of cause and effect, of which one member can at 
any time recal the other ; and the recollections thus formed 
make up a large portion of our knowledge of the ways and 
characters of mankind. 

Some minds are peculiarly susceptible to this class of 
effects ; the movements that constitute the expression of men 
and animals take a deep hold of their attention, and are 
proportionably impressed on the memory. Such minds are 
thereby rendered more than usually knowing inhuman nature; 



42 1 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

while at the same time they feel a lively interest in the 
numerous manifestations of living creatures. 

62. Our impression of any individual man or woman is 
made up of their permanent image and their various move- 
ments and activity in a number of situations and circumstances. 
These, repeated to our view, at last fix themselves in our 
mind with sufficient force to be revivable on the occasion of any 
link being present. Thus we have seen a person made angry 
by a blow ; we connect the occurrence with the anger in our 
minds, and this connexion is an item of our knowledge of his 
character. When the anger is brought before our view we 
are reminded of the blow as a cause ; when the provocation is 
present, it recals the anger. We can use this sequence for the 
purpose of either avoiding or bringing on the effect ; we can 
generalise it as a fact of human nature in general ; we can 
reproduce it dramatically ; we can explain other men's anger 
by it. Other sequences come in addition to this, and by 
sufficient length of time and opportunity we can associate 
together cause and effect through the whole cycle of an indi- 
vidual's ordinary actions. We are then said to know the 
person. Our knowledge of animals is of the very same nature. 

The peculiar susceptibility to the human presence now 
spoken of may arise out of several different sources. The 
natural history sense makes all visible imagery impressive, 
and the human face and form among the rest. The suscepti- 
bility to visible movements is a distinct element wherein minds 
differ, and with it is connected the sense of forms, and parti- 
cularly the human. The sympathetic disposition as contrasted 
with the egotistic, or self-engrossed, is in favour of the same 
turn for noticing other people's ways. The artistic sense finds 
much of its material in the human subject and is thereby 
made alive to the manifestations of living men. To all these 
causes of special attention to the phenomena of humanity, we 
are to add the strong passions and emotions that have our 
fellow beings for their subjects, and we shall then see how it 
comes that the natural, if not ' the proper study of mankind 
is man.' The interest of external nature viewed by itself is 
cold in comparison, and hence its sequences make a much 



CONDITIONS OF MECHANICAL ACQUIKEMENT. 425 

smaller part of the acquired ideas of causation in the generality 
of minds than those relating to living men and women. 

In the foregoing view I have purposely omitted the 
mention of scientific causation. 



MECHANICAL ACQUISITIONS. 

We have now touched on what I consider the chief funda- 
mental classes of associated things under Contiguity. In what 
remains of this chapter no new case will be introduced. What 
is now proposed is to cany out the illustration of some of the 
preceding heads into the principal departments of intellectual 
acquirement. 

6$. Under Mechanical Acquisitions we include the whole 
of handicraft industry and skill, as well as the use of the 
bodily members in the more obvious and universal actions 
of daily life. Military training, the exercises of sport, recrea- 
tion, and amusement, the handling of tools in every kind of 
manual operation, the care of the person, are all so many 
acquired or artificial linkings of action with action, or action 
with sensation, through the operation of the adhesive force of 
the brain. 

I feel no doubt that the first condition of high success in 
all these acquirements is the existence of a vigorous and various 
spontaneity of the active organs concerned ; the forces of the 
brain must especially direct themselves into the channels of 
bodily movement. This makes the active temperament, the 
natural turn for active display. When such is the primitive 
arrangement of the machinery of the nervous system, the 
movements once commenced are speedily fixed into the routine 
of habit. To this spontaneity we must continually recur as 
the origin of all voluntary power or active acquirement. 

The delicacy of the senses concerned in the effect to be 
produced must also be taken into account when we would 
enquire into the sources of bodily acquisition. If the operation 
is to make a paste, or to bring out a polish, the touch is the 
testing organ, and must have the requisite delicacy ; if the 
work is judged by colour, the eye must be duly sensitive; if 



426 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

to play on an instrument, the ear must discriminate the shades 
of sound. However flexible and powerful be the active organ, 
it can never transcend the effect produced. The most delicate 
fingers are useless for musical performance when the ear 
is unsusceptible of a corresponding delicacy of musical per- 
ception. 

These two conditions being recognised, we may next 
assume that there is a certain force of adhesiveness belonging 
to each individual character, in some more and others less. It 
is difficult to demonstrate that such a difference remains after 
allowing for all circumstances and conditions ; on the other 
hand, it would be still more difficult to show that it does not 
exist. In our experience of human beings we are accustomed 
to every imaginable form of inequality within certain limits ; 
the stature, bulk, complexion, muscularity, digestive and respi- 
ratory vigour, circulation, — are constantly varying, and the 
functions of the brain cannot be proved to be free from the 
like inequalities among individuals. 

Much more modifiable than these three conditions, although 
still, as I believe, growing out of the natural character, is the 
tendency to concentrate the energy of the brain upon bodily 
exercise, through the medium of the fascination that it gives, 
or the agreeable emotion connected with it. This fascinating 
and agreeable emotion maintains the cerebral currents in that 
particular channel in preference to others, and brings on the 
plastic adhesion in a corresponding degree. For example, 
when the operation of drawing or sketching has from any 
cause a peculiar charm and power of satisfying the mind, it 
draws the entire stream of mental attention upon itself; the 
individual is never weary of the occupation ; the adhesive 
action is monopolised upon one subject, instead of being dis- 
tributed over many. This circumstance determines special 
mechanical gifts and acquirements, even when the natural 
activity is equally distributed over all the members. 

64. We must now advert to the circumstances favouring 
mechanical acquisition that depend not on the inborn pecu- 
liarities, but on the manner of going to work. This is the 
practical point. The training of recruits in the army may be 



TRAINING OF RECRUITS IN THE ARMY. 427 

taken as a good example of how mechanical discipline should 
be conducted. As I am informed, the system there pursued 
is this ; the recruits are drilled three times a day, morning, 
forenoon, and afternoon, for about an hour and a half or two 
hours each time. They have thus a meal and a period of rest 
between each drilling. I am not aware of any better general 
arrangement that could be devised for attaining the greatest 
results in the least time. For in the first place, the moments 
of greatest bodily vigour and freshness are to be chosen 
for the work of discipline. In the next place, the exercise 
ought not to be continued too long at a time; when the 
muscles and brain are once thoroughly fatigued, the plasticity 
is at an end, and nothing is gained by persisting farther. 
Lastly, the lessons ought not to be too short : that is to say, a 
certain time is requisite to get the body into the set that the 
exercises require. Scarcely any exercise of less than half an 
hour's duration will take a decided hold of the system. To 
hit the mean between the period of thorough engagement of 
the organs in the work on hand, and the period of excessive 
fatigue, constitutes the practical judgment of the drill-master 
in every department. In the army, where the time of the 
learners is completely under command, the system of three 
daily lessons with intervals of rest and refreshment is chosen 
as the very best arrangement ; the mental disgust apt to be 
generated by occupying the entire strength of the system upon 
one class of operations is not taken into account. In the 
discipline of early education in general there is more variety 
of interest, and it is possible to occupy nearly half the day 
continuously upon the work. But the army system is the 
model, in circumstances where it is practicable to bring the 
pupils together early morning, forenoon, and afternoon. 

The rule for the exercises of the learner is very different 
from the rule for the practised workman at his work. In this 
last case, long continued and uninterrupted application is best. 
But in learning a new thing the stress of the attention very 
soon fatigues the brain ; so does the committing of blunders 
and false steps. Moreover, the organs unhabituated to an 
operation are less able to sustain it. But when the mechanical 



428 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

routine is perfect, and the parts strengthened by long practice, 
it is unnecessary to halt at every two hours ; it is much better 
to continue at work for four, five, or six hours, as the case 
may be. 

The apprentice learning his trade keeps the same hours as 
the workman, and is not treated as an army recruit or a 
schoolboy. But in this case the plan of proceeding is different. 
The apprentice, having gained some one single step, before 
taking another, goes on repeating that process exactly as a 
productive workman. He gets much more time for his educa- 
tion, and has it largely diluted with routine work. This 
makes bis situation tolerable during the long hours of his 
working day. It is when the rate of acquisition is pushed to 
the uttermost, and actual production disregarded, that the 
system of long intervals of rest is most necessary.* 

A learner's progress will be vitally dependent on the 
absence of any other engrossing passion or pursuit. This 
makes it of so great consequence to have a certain amount of 
exclusive liking for the subject, whatever it may be. 

VOCAL OR LINGUAL ACQUISITIONS. 

Although the acquisitions of the articulating organs in 
speech and languages follow the very same general laws as 
other mechanical acquirements, their importance as a branch 
of human intelligence demands for them a special notice. I 
shall advert first to the vocal exercise of singing. 

65. The acquiring of musical airs and harmonies by the 
voice depends on the vocal organs, on the ear, and on certain 
sensibilities that may be supposed to pass beyond the ear. 

As regards the vocal organs themselves, they must neces- 
sarily be adapted to the production of musical notes through 
a sufficient register. They must further be so related to the 
nervous centres, as spontaneously to give birth to these sounds in 



* I should remark, however, that it is unnatural, and on various 
accounts injudicious, to require an apprentice to work the lull time of a 
fully-trained, man. 



ACQUISITION OF VOCAL MUSIC. 429 

great variety, that is to say, in many shades of difference. It 
belongs to the natural endowment of the centres, that they 
shall act in many degrees of energy upon the respective 
muscles, so as to give at the very outset a large variety of 
sounds to be caught up, associated, and artificially reproduced. 
The narrow or wide compass of these primeval and chance 
utterances — the result of the spontaneous discharge of nerve 
force from the centres — is the material circumstance in deter- 
mining the flexibility or natural variety of the voice. 

Next comes the ear, the regulator of the effects produced 
by the spontaneity of the voice. For music, as already 
noticed, the ear must be discriminatingly sensitive to pitch 
and the varieties of up and down, and to the harmonies and 
discords of different pitches. This sensitiveness rules the 
action of the voice, and reduces its wild utterances into regular 
modes productive of musical effect. The ear thus discrimi- 
native must also be adhesive to trains of sounds, so as to con- 
stitute a good memory for what it hears, and thereby to in- 
struct the voice. The adhesiveness is in fact double ; it resides 
partly in the vocal organs themselves, and partly in the ear. 
A good ear is one both discriminative and adhesive ; the first 
circumstance doubtless favouring the second. The adhesive- 
ness of the frame for mechanical exercises in general will 
probably show itself in the musical voice, when once it has 
been put in the proper train. But I can have little doubt that 
the quality of the ear is the special and ruling circumstance 
in the acquisitions of the singer. 

The inward sense and enjoyment of musical effects causes 
here as elsewhere a flow of mental attention to the acts of 
listening and imitating. There is, however, a certain intoxi- 
cation of excitement caused in some minds that does not 
answer the ends of acquisition, according to the important 
distinction already drawn between vague excitement and 
arrested attention. 

The acquisition of instrumental music may be explained 
by substituting for the voice the action of the hands or the 
mouth, all other considerations remaining the same. 

It would not be difficult to apply a test to the musical 



430 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

adhesiveness of different persons by fixing upon a correspond- 
ing stage of progress, and counting the number of repetitions 
necessary to learn a melody. The most enormous differences 
in this respect may be constantly observed ; two or three 
repetitions being as good to one person as two or three scores 
of repetitions to another. 

66. In Articulate Speech we have likewise a case of vocal 
action guided by the ear, but with great differences as respects 
both the action and the feeling. The power of articulating 
brings out a new series of movements, those of the mouth ; 
while the nice graduation of the force of the chest and of the 
tension of the vocal chords required in singing is here dis- 
pensed with. The sensitiveness of the ear to articulate sounds 
has already been noticed as quite distinct from the musical 
sense. Hence, on both grounds, speaking and singing are 
exercises so different that the greatest excellence in the one is 
compatible with the lowest attainments in the other, as expe- 
rience testifies. 

The first stage of speaking is the utterance of simple 
vowels or of simple consonants with vowels attached, as wa, 
ma, pa, hum. The sound 'ah' is the easiest exertion of the 
mouth ; the other vowels, e, i, o, u, are more difficult positions. 
The labial consonants, m, p, b, usually, but not always, pre- 
cede the dental and guttural ; the closing of the lips being a 
very easy effort. I am not aware that the dental letters, d, I, 
t, n, are more easy than the gutturals, k, g, but the aspirates 
are perhaps more difficult than either. Of the vibrating 
sounds, the hissing action of the s is readier got at than 
the r. For this last letter I and w are used, as lun, wun, 
for run. 

A new class of difficulties appears in the attempts to com- 
bine two consonants into one utterance ; as in syllables that 
begin and end with a consonant. Some of these are found 
easier than others ; mavi is easier than man, and this than 
mug ; for the reason that it is less difficult to combine two 
labials, than a labial with a dental, or a guttural. 

There are two stages in the acquirement of articulate 
sounds ; the first is the stage of spontaneous utterances, and 



ACQUISITIONS OF SPEECH. 431 



the second the stage of imitation. In both, the natural 
flexibility or variety of the organs must be coupled with 
delicacy of the ear for articulate effects in order to make rapid 
progress. 

The joining of syllables and words into continuous speech 
brings into play a further exercise of the associating principle ; 
but there is also added the element of intonation, or cadence. 
This is a totally distinct effect at every stage of verbal acquisi- 
tion. The sense for it is a peculiar feeling in the ear of the 
musical species, and the action of the voice to produce it is 
noways the same as the articulate action. The effect of 
cadence agrees with all the accessories of musical effect, having 
little regard to what are the principal circumstances in the other, 
namely, pitch, with its harmonies and time. In cadence the 
voice rises and falls in pitch, but not with any nice or measured 
gradation ; the degree of stress or emphasis, the change from 
the abrupt to the long-drawn utterance, the alternate rise and 
fall of the voice, the descent and gradual subsidence at the 
close, are among the characteristics of cadence, or the music 
of speech. It appeals more to the muscular sensibility of the 
ear than to the auditory sense proper ; it is like the effect of 
curves and beautiful forms on the eye. A great susceptibility 
to intonation marks some constitutions, and probably goes 
along with that other sensibility to curve lines, and to 
muscular effects in general. If the voice be naturally favour- 
able to the changes of intonation, the concurrence of a good 
ear for it will inevitably render the acquisition easy • and by 
a reasonable amount of study the highest effects of oratory 
may be successfully achieved. 

The earliest acquisitions of the purely verbal kind, such as 
prayers, rhymes, and stories, bring to the test the natural force 
of the verbal memory. The less the appreciation of meaning, 
the better the criterion afforded of pure verbal adhesiveness. 
This quality, when strongly manifested, is the basis of lingual 
scholarship, and of what is called memory by rote. It mani- 
fests the presence of a good articulate ear, and probably a high 
degree of the adhesive association by contiguity. The memory 
of the ancient bards, which had to retain to the letter long 



432 LAW OF CONTIGUITY, 

compositions, and the kind of erudition ascribed to the Druids, 
would exemplify it, although in these cases, natural deficiency 
could be made up by iteration. 

67. In the acquisition of the Mother Tongue, the process 
is partly a verbal one, and partly an association of names with 
objects. Here there is a complex effect. For in associating 
two things of a different nature, as a sound on the ear, with 
an appearance to the eye, — the name ' sun/ for example, with 
the visible effect, the adhesiveness depends on the degree of 
impression produced by each. In fact we remember much 
sooner the names of things that impress us, than the names 
of indifferent things. Hence the progress in the use of names 
depends on the tenacity of the mind for the corresponding 
things. The acquisition of our mother tongue is something 
exceedingly vast, seeing that it implies the conception of all 
the objects named therein ; and the use of names proceeds 
with the experience of things. Doubtless in this case too the 
force of mere contiguity counts as the prevailing circumstance ; 
for in order that all objects indiscriminately may yield 
tenacious impressions, this power must be naturally great, and 
the same circumstance would serve to foster the growth of the 
adhesive link between name and thing. In the natural history 
intellect there is much in common with the verbal scholar. 

When we come to the case of Written Language, the 
resemblance just hinted at is still closer ; for there the object is 
not an articulation but a visible sign, and the tenacity of its 
adherence will depend on the eye and its connexions in the 
brain. In acquiring language through the medium of writing 
or print, we may either keep a hold of the visible symbols as 
pictures in the eye, just as we remember maps and diagrams, 
or we may pass from these to the vocal pronunciation, and 
retain it by articulate adhesiveness. It is not necessary to 
read aloud in order to transfer the work from the eye to the 
voice, a mere whispered or muttered articulation, a mere ideal 
rehearsal, will take, and become coherent. In fact, I believe 
we retain written language by the help of both methods, or by 
a combination of trains of symbols, as seen by the eye, with 
trains of articulations rehuarsed by the voice. This is an 



FOREIGN LANGUAGES. — ORATORICAL ACQUISITION. 433 

example of Compound Associations, to which I shall devote a 
chapter apart. Notwithstanding this division of the labour of 
retaining written speech between .sight and vocalisation, it is 
obvious that a good retentive eye for alphabetic forms is an 
element in the intellect of the scholar. In the adhesion of 
forms generally, I have classified three different kinds retained 
by different modes of cerebral force, namely, the artistic, the 
mathematical, and the arbitrary. These last are the most 
numerous, and individually the least important ; all that needs 
to be retained in them is some characteristic point wherein 
each is distinguished from the rest. The recollection of avast 
multitude of trains of alphabets and names and compositions 
demands a strong natural cohesiveness of Contiguity ; for they 
will not afford an intense concentration of the brain, as in the 
case of the few and important forms of Geometry and the 
other sciences. On the whole, therefore, as above remarked, 
there is a common character in the Scholarly and the Natural 
History intellect. 

68. In acquiring Foreign Languages by the usual methods, 
we have more of the purely verbal than in the mother tongue. 
We do not usually connect the names of a foreign language 
with the objects, but with the names already learnt. We may 
connect sound with sound, as when we are taught orally, 
articulation with articulation, or mark with mark in the eye. 
Thus ' domus* and ' house ' may be associated as two sounds, 
two articulations, or two sights ; usually we have the help of 
all three ways of linking. Including the act of writing down 
words there are no less than four lines of adhesion, involving 
two senses and two modes of mechanical exertion. What the 
hand has shaped persists as an idea in the moving circles of 
the arm, which idea tends to remain coherent, and afterwards 
to recover itself in full ; it may thus act as a help along with 
the other links in the recollection of names and compositions. 

In the absence of a good contiguous cohesiveness for 
indifferent things, such as arbitrary sounds and symbols, lingual 
acquisitions are necessarily laborious and difficult, and an 
unprofitable waste of mind. 

69. Oratorical Acquisition introduces the element of 

F F 



434 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

Cadence, the music of speech. This is partly created in our- 
selves by the spontaneous flow of voice becoming modified to 
please each person's own ear; in this way we have originality 
of cadence, whether the quality of the creation be high or 
low. But for the most part it is acquired by hearing others, 
like vocal melodies. Many forms of cadence prevail in the 
world. Each nation has characteristic strains of this kind; 
the foreigner, never so perfect in the pronunciation of the 
words of another language, is detected by the absence of the 
national manner in his spoken music. Provinces differ in the 
same country: English, Irish, and Scotch have their peculiar 
strains. The orator is a man able to produce a great variety 
of the richest cadences, just as a sioger has the command 
of many vocal melodies. To fit articulate language into the 
forms and falls of musical articulation is the elocutionist's 
art. We have no artificial means of expressing or repre- 
senting the oratorical rhythm, so as to preserve the manner 
of a great orator, or to mark the differences between one 
cadence and another; the notation of the elocution manuals 
is not carried far enough for this. But we can easily imagine 
the process of oratorical acquirement, and we are able to 
specify the points that it turns upon. The abundant and 
various action of the voice by primitive coustitution, the sus- 
ceptible ear, the opportunity of hearing many and good 
varieties of the elocutionist's display, and a strong sustaining 
interest in this particular effect — are the preliminary essen- 
tials. A rapid fixing of this class of impressions will be 
favoured by all those circumstances, and ought to be aided 
besides by a good general adhesiveness of the brain. When 
the individual has by his own exertions, following the lead of 
his ear, and using all his tendencies, natural and acquired, 
struck out a fine strain of utterance, it is desirable that this 
should be ready to fix itself permanently for future uses, and 
for still further acquirements; no art can be carried to per- 
fection in a mind where the finest effects disintegrate as fast 
as they are produced. 

Cadence, although properly a spoken effect, is transparent 
through written composition. In pronouncing the language 



CONTIGUITY IN SCIENCE. 435 

of Johnson or Milton, we fall into a distinct strain ; this too 
we can acquire and impress upon compositions of our own. 
As a rule we drink in the cadences most suitable to the 
natural march of our own vocal organs, or most fascinating to 
our senses. 

CONTIGUITY OPERATING IN SCIENCE. 

70. By Science I here understand the artificial symbolism 
and machinery requisite for expressing the laws and pro- 
perties of the world, as distinguished from the actual appear- 
ances of things to the common eye, of which I have already 
spoken under the heads of natural conjunctions, succes- 
sions, &c. Thus a treatise on Astronomy is a mass of alge- 
braical calculations and numerical tables. Nothing can well 
be more unlike the aspects of sun, moon, and planets than 
the algebraical formulae and numerical tables expressing the 
scientific relations of these bodies. 

The sciences range from the extremely abstract and sym- 
bolical, where nature in its obvious garb is utterly excluded 
such as Mathematics, to the more concrete subjects of Natural 
History, wherein some part of the acquisition really consists 
in storing up the common appearances of animals, plants, and 
minerals. The laws of contiguous association differ according 
as any one branch is nearer the one or the other extreme. 
Thus theoretical Mechanics, Astronomy, and Optics, come 
under the mathematical class. _ The experimental parts of 
Chemistry, Physiology, and Anatomy approach the other end 
of the scale : in these the adhesiveness of the natural history 
mind for sensible appearances and properties is of the highest 
consequence. 

To advert to the more abstract sciences, — which represent 
science as most opposed to our unscientific familiarity with 
the things about us, — the symbols of Arithmetic and Mathe- 
matics generally, the symbols and nomenclature of Chemistry 
(combining proportions, atoms, &c), the nomenclature and 
abstractions of Physiology (cells, corpuscles, ultimate fibres, 
secreting glands), require a peculiar cast of intellect for their 
acquisition; and they are so much of a kind that the mental 

ff2 



436 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

adhesiveness suited for one would not be much at fault in any 
other. They are a class of uninteresting forms not remarkably 
numerous, which are to be held in the mind with great tena- 
city, and to be taken as the sole representatives of all that 
is interesting in the world. The self-denial that enables us to 
dwell among algebraical symbols, and to concentrate the 
whole force of the brain upon these, to the exclusion of all 
those things that gratify the various senses and emotions, — 
this abnegation, so to speak, of human interest, is the moral 
peculiarity of the mathematician. To be able, for the sake of 
the ends of Science, — the attainment of truth and certainty 
as to the causes of things, — to force the mind to entertain 
willingly conceptions so meagre as the diagrams of Geometry 
or the symbols of Algebra and Chemistry, proves that the 
cerebral currents go naturally towards the fixing of mere 
visible forms, such as have no interest in themselves, but serve 
as the instruments of our practical ends. It is not necessary 
that the mathematical mind should be destitute of attraction 
for colour, and beauty, and picturesqueness, and music, but it 
is necessary, in such a mind, to cast all these out of the view, 
and to grapple with the artificial symbols that express the most 
extensively important truths of the world. This interest in 
attaining the sure and certain laws of the universe, is the 
motive for immersing the mind in such a cheerless labyrinth 
of uncouth characters; this motive being once strong in an 
individual, the only other requisite is strong natural adhe- 
siveness for arbitrary symbols, an adhesiveness resulting from 
a facility in concentrating the mind upon them. The symbols 
of a science are few in comparison with the words of a lan- 
guage, but the hold of the one must be much more severe 
than of the other. A circle, used as a diagram in Euclid, 
must make a far deeper impression than a circle as an 
alphabetic letter. With Euclid's circle has to be associated 
innumerable lines and constructions, which can never be all 
presented to the eye at one time, but must be firmly held in 
idea alone, ready to be brought up on the hint being given; 
to the circle of written language there is no such array of 
ideal appendages, it is conceived simply as it can be written, 






THE ABSTRACT SCIENCES. 437 

and only as regards its visible difference from the other letters 
of the same alphabet. It is this complication of visible 
figures, with a multitude of associates not possible to exhibit 
at once to the eye, and which yet must all be at command, 
that gives such an intellectual character to scientific reason- 
ings. The Geometrician must retain, in connexion with a 
circle, all the constructions of Euclid's Third Book, and, if need 
be, all the constructions that precede and give foundation to 
these, and likewise the language that represents in words 
what cannot be presented to the eye ; all which puts to a 
severe test the cerebral adhesiveness for uninteresting forms. 
Moreover, this adhesion must get firm rapidly at every step, 
otherwise the earlier steps of a deduction would be lost before 
the later were fixed. In an algebraical problem, where x is 
put for one thing, and y for another, the learner must, by the 
force of a single repetition, remember all through that these 
letters stand for such and such things. Persons not rapidly 
impressed with these arbitrary connexions are unqualified for 
such operations. 

In Arithmetic, the ciphers, their additions, subtractions, 
multiplications, and the decimal system of reckoning, are of 
the nature of associations of symbolical forms, and require the 
firm concentration of the mind upon arbitrary signs for the 
sake of the end they serve. In Algebra, the same operation 
is carried to a higher complexity, but without any difference 
in the nature of the machinery. In Geometry, a host of defi- 
nitions have to be remembered; that is, a line, a space, a 
square, a circle, must be associated with certain other lines 
and constructions, with the assistance of language. A circle 
is a line equally distant from a central point. The association 
here is between the visible aspect of the circle, with its central 
point, and a line drawn from the centre to the circumference, 
which line is a representative line, and may be drawn any- 
where round the whole compass of the figure. This principle 
of representation is a thing of the intellect entirely; for, in 
addition to the sensible object, there is a fact, or a multitude 
of facts, that cannot be made apparent to the eye at one and 
the same moment. With the sensible appearance of a tri- 



438 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

angle in Euclid, there is a movement of the mind away from this 
to other triangles, seen or remembered, and we are not allowed 
to make any affirmation about that triangle, or to take any 
notice of any point in its appearance, without going over other 
triangles, to see if the same feature holds in these also. Such 
is the restraint imposed upon us in dealing with representative 
objects in general, among which scientific diagrams are to be 
classed. Instead of occupying ourselves wholly with the 
sensible present, we must be continually passing to and fro 
between it and the ideal absent, thus checking our movements 
by incessant comparison. All this proceeding is contrary to 
the bent of the natural mind. It shows how the operation 
of intellect transcends the operation of sense, in this way, 
namely, that intellect can mix any amount of the past and 
distant with the consideration of the present, a power exten- 
sively drawn upon in the mathematical and other abstract 
sciences. 

71. In the experimental and concrete sciences, as Heat, 
Electricity, Chemistry, Anatomy, and Natural History in 
general, the consideration of the actual appearances to the 
senses mixes largely with the artificial symbols and abstrac- 
tions, and hence the value of a good adhesiveness for colour 
and shape, and tact, and even taste and smell, in storing up 
the objects of those sciences. The Mathematical mind may 
be quite at fault here, just as the Natural History mind has 
no chance to be suited for the mathematical group of subjects. 
In Anatomy, for example, there is a vast detail of bones, 
ligaments, muscles, blood vessels, nerves, &c, and the visual 
adhesiveness for mere colour is a very great element in the 
recollection, as with a map, or a pictorial landscape. The 
tactual adhesiveness is likewise of value in this class of objects, 
and in all the objects of the natural history class, minerals, 
plants, and animals, all which are handled as well as seen. 
Thus it is that, as regards the intellectual character or the 
peculiar mode of the contiguous adhesiveness, there are two 
classes of scientific minds, represented by the extreme terms 
of Mathematics and Natural History, the abstract or artificial, 



ACQUISITIONS IN BUSINESS. 439 

and the concrete or real. As regards the modes of human 
interest or fascination, a greater number of classes could be 
made out: pure mathematics, as in Algebra and Geometry, 
would have a different set of votaries from mathematics 
applied in Mechanics, Astronomy, Optics, &c. ; and the natural 
history group would be both separated from experimental 
Physics and Chemistry, and broken up into its component 
members, Mineralogy, Geology, Botany, and Zoology. 

72. The sciences of Logic, Grammar, Mind, Political 
Economy, &c, are noted for being pre-eminently verbal 
sciences; the artificial element used for expressing their gene- 
ralities is Language, or general terms. These verbal forms 
are of the nature of symbolic forms in this, that they are 
thoroughly uninteresting in themselves, that they express the 
general, and not the particular or concrete, and must be held 
intensely by the mind under the stimulus of the end they 
serve. The subject matter of each is different, and unequally 
held by different minds, but on the whole their retention is 
remarkably of a piece with the other abstract sciences. 

BUSINESS, OB PBACTICAL LIFE. 

73. In the higher departments of industry, or business — 
handicraft labour being the inferior department, — the forces 
of the intelligence have a wide scope, the widest next to pure 
science. In the formalities and machinery of business, — 
book-keeping, calculation, money reckoning, banking, con- 
tracts, deeds, acts of parliament, &c. — we have a number of 
dry artificial elements, not unlike the machinery of the ab- 
stract sciences, but touching more closely and frequently upon 
things of real interest, and therefore a less severe stretch of 
intellect than the other. In fact, the superior branches of 
industry, — in trade, manufactures, government, &c. — seem well 
adapted for the great majority of the cleverest minds. The 
interest arising from the human wants and the love of gain is 
powerful by nature, and independently of deep reflection or 
any refining process, and is well calculated to stimulate the 



440 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

mass of mankind, of whom very few can ever be strongly 
possessed with the interest belonging to science, that is, the 
desire of getting at truth. 

74. The management of human beings, which is a large 
department of practical life, proceeds upon certain active 
qualities that give a natural influence and ascendency over 
others, and upon a knowledge of the ways and tempers 
of men. This last accomplishment I have already touched 
upon (see p. 424). Without such knowledge in considerable 
measure, the master of workmen, the teacher, the legislator, 
and many other professions besides, can hardly be said to be 
skilled in their craft. It requires a kind of observation ren- 
dered difficult by the very causes that make man interesting 
to man ; for those passionate feelings that arrest our gaze 
upon our fellows sway the mind from cool judgments. It is 
not so easy to read accurately a man or woman as it is to 
read a mineral. 

A person engaged in any work should naturally be alive 
to the effect he is producing, for this it is that guides his 
hand. The builder sees that his wall is rising plumb and 
square. But it happens somehow or other, in acting upon 
men in the various capacities of teaching, ruling, persuading, 
pleasing, serving, we are not so sensitive to the exact opera- 
tion of our attempts as in dealing with the material world, 
nor so easily made to modify the hand so as to suit the end 
in view. 

ACQUISITIONS IN FINE ART. 

75. In the Fine Arts there are formed combinations, 
aggregates, groupings, rhapsodic successions, — such as to pro- 
duce the species of effect termed beautiful, sublime, pic- 
turesque, harmonious, &c. ; and the perception of those effects 
is what we call Taste. 

The Artist in any department has to attain the power of 
producing these combinations. This power is in the first 
instance a result of creative spontaneity, guided by the sense 
of the effect produced ; it is a mode of the natural forth-putting 
of the energies of the voice, or the hand, as in the commence- 






QUALITIES OF THE AETIST. 441 

ment of every kind of active faculty. The first musician 
gave scope to his vocal powers at random, and gradually cor- 
rected the action according to his ear. When this natural 
outburst took some definite and agreeable shape it became a 
song, a melody, caught up by imitation and handed down to 
future ages. 

A large part of every artist's power necessarily comes by 
acquisition, or by the operation of the force of Contiguity. 
He stores up the combinations produced by previous artists, 
and fixes in his mind those that he produces in himself, and 
gradually rises to his highest efforts of execution. In this 
acquisitive process, the points of character that come to his 
aid appear to be the following, of which, however, the enuncia- 
tion is not new to the reader. 

(i.) A keen sensibility and adhesiveness for the element 
or the material that the artist works in. The musician's ear 
must be sensitive to sounds and successions of sound, and that 
in the manner best adapted for fixing and retaining them : 
by which circumstance he is able to acquire a large stock of 
melodies. The sculptor must have a keen sense of contour 
and form ; the painter, of form and colour ; the actor, of 
dramatic movements ; the poet, of language and the usual 
subjects of poetry. 

(2.) In addition to this sensitiveness to the material of the 
art in general, we must add the special sensibility to the 
proper effects of the art ; the sense of melody and harmony 
in music, of beautiful curves and proportions in sculpture and 
architecture, of these and of coloured effects in painting, and 
so forth. I take for granted that beauty is not arbitrary, — 
that there are effects that please the generality of mankind 
when once produced. For these the Artist has a strong pre- 
ference, and by virtue of this preference he acquires a stronger 
hold of what exemplifies them than of what does not. It is 
not every mass of colouring that impresses itself on the 
painter's recollection. He ought to remember coloured masses 
in general better than other people, but being specially 
fascinated by a certain class which he calls harmonious, he is 
most ready to recal these at after times. So a poet needs a 



442 



LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 



large disinterested adhesiveness for the concretes of nature 
and the incidents of humanity, but with this alone he would 
be indistinguishable from a born naturalist : the disinterested 
adhesiveness must be qualified by a special fascination for 
things that have a poet's interest, so as to alter the proportions 
of his impressibility and give the preponderance to one special 
class of appearances. Not all trees and all mountains and all 
vegetation and all displays of human feeling should impress 
alike either a painter or a poet : their character is specially 
made for their preferences. 

(3.) An artist in any art is to a great extent a mechanical 
workman, and progresses in his art according as mechanical 
operative skill fixes itself in his framework. The singer, the 
orator, the actor, owe their improvement to the retentiveness 
of the voice under vocal practice. The painter and sculptor 
must be persons that would soon learn any handicraft opera- 
tion of the artisan's workshop. This muscular adhesiveness 
belongs to the structure of the muscular system with its nerve 
centres, and is a very material fact of character ; it is the 
higher quality of the muscular development, mere brute force 
being the lower. It may be often observed, I think, that both 
qualities go together, — the plasticity and the physical force, — 
and with them, as a matter of course, an enjoyment and pre- 
ference for muscular activity. An abstract thinker may 
dispense with this muscular element of character, except as a 
counterpoise to the tendency to keep up a whirl and isolation 
of the circles of the brain ; but to the artist, in common with 
the artisan, the high physical development of the active organs 
I should consider an almost indispensable endowment. Its 
importance fades away only in such a case as the Poet, in 
whom the artist approaches to the man of pure thought and 
mere ideal activity. 

HISTOEY AND NARRATIVE. 

76. The successions of events and transactions in human 
life, remembered and related, make History. A considerable 
portion of each one's stock of recollections is made up of this 
kind of matter. 



HISTORICAL RECOLLECTION. 443 

The transactions and events wherein we have been our- 
selves present impress themselves on our mind as pictures of 
living men and women, their various manifestations, and the 
appearances and situations of things about them. It is 
thus that we retain the impression of a public assembly, a 
military spectacle, a pageant, a play, or any of the daily events 
of private society or ordinary business. The pictorial mind is 
fully alive and susceptible to such things, and proves itself by 
retaining them. The retentiveness is influenced by the 
natural adhesiveness to surrounding appearaDces as they 
succeed one another, by the general interest in human beings, 
and by the specific or personal interest that belongs to the 
individual transactions. Of this last influence on the attention, 
it is easy to fall upon any amount of illustration. The 
soldierly feeling fixes the mind upon battles, reviews, and 
military movements; the trader is arrested by markets and 
trading enterprise ; the politician by diplomatic congresses and 
debates; the sporting mind is alive on the race-course; the 
family interest excites the attention upon the incidents of the 
domestic circle. 

A single transaction deliberately witnessed is often able to 
impress itself minutely on the memory for life. There seems 
to be in the case of human events an exception to the law of 
repetition, or to the usual necessity for passing a thing 
before the mind many times in order to make it coherent. 
But it is not difficult to account for this seeming anomaly. 
For, in the first place, such transactions are usually slow; 
that is, they keep the attention awake for a length of 
time before they are completed ; a single race, if we in- 
clude the preparations, will engage the mind for an hour 
together; while many transactions occupy days and months, 
being the subject of frequent attention all through. But what 
is more; an event past is repeatedly brought up in the 
recollection, and every such occasion is a mental repetition, and 
ends in fixing the different parts in the mind. After being 
present at au exciting spectacle, our thoughts keep themselves 
engaged upon its details, and in this retrospect we expand our 
attention upon things that were but hurriedly glanced at as 



444 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

they passed before the actual view. Such rehearsal in the 
mind after the reality has passed, is a great means of im- 
pressing the events of our personal experience. The degree of 
emotional interest attaching to them displays its efficacy in 
bringing about their more or less frequent recal. What is 
indifferent passes by and is never dwelt upon afterwards; 
what has excited us at the time excites us in the remembrance, 
and secures a large space in our ideal meditations. Provision 
is thus made for consolidating in the memory a train of cir- 
cumstances that do not admit of being repeated in the view. 
We are thereby enabled to recal in after years all the leading 
transactions that are now going on around us; we can describe 
the incidents connected with our family, our village or city, 
our school, our places of business, recreation, or worship ; we 
can live over again, in minute detail, the scenes that had an 
intense pleasurable or painful interest at the time. 

77. The transactions that we know by hearsay, or the 
narrative of others, impress themselves somewhat differently. 
We have no longer the actual scenes presented to our vision. 
They are represented by words, and the recollection is modified 
by the circumstances affecting verbal adhesion. If we make 
the extreme supposition that the hearer of a narrative has his 
mind carried at once to the scenes and events themselves, and 
is able to realize them with an almost living reality, the case 
is not different from the foregoing ; the words are made use 
of to hoist the scenes, and then drop away. But there are few 
people that have this vivid power of conceiving the realities of 
narrated transactions. In general, the verbal succession of the 
narrative is itself a medium of holding together the events 
contained in it, and the recollection is a mixture of adhesions, 
pictorial and verbal. 

Written history may therefore be retained by a good 
verbal memory. Where the thread of pictured events has 
snapped, the thread of verbal succession in the printed page 
may chance to be adherent ; between the two, the power of 
recollection on the whole is irregularly divided. 



U5 



OUR PAST LIFE. 



78. The train of our past existence is made coherent in 
the mind through contiguity, and can be recalled with more 
or less minuteness according to the strength of the adhe- 
sion. In any subject that is complicated with a multitude of 
details, only a few prominent features usually adhere ; as, for 
example, the parts of a landscape, or the incidents of a 
history ; and such is the case with the great complex current 
of each one's individual existence. 

This current is made up of all the elements contained in 
the foregoing heads of this chapter. It is made up of all our 
actions, all our sensations, emotions, volitions, in the order of 
their occurrence. It is the track described by each individual 
through the world during his sojourn therein ; it comprises all 
that he has done and all that he has been impressed with. 

Under the previous head I have spoken of the stream of 
history, or the current of events passing before the eyes of a 
spectator supposed to be passive. This spectatorship of what 
is going on about us does not express the whole current of 
our remembered existence ; there is wanting the series of our 
own doings and transactions. When what we have done is 
added to what we have seen and felt, the history of self is 
complete. 

The peculiar feature of the present case, therefore, is the 
remembrance of our own actions according as they happened. 
We have to determine the nature of the bond that associates 
things done by us, a,nd not simply seen. 

79. In the first place, a vast number of our movements 
consist in changing the spectacle about us, or in producing a 
series of appearances to the eye, or effects on the senses in 
general. Thus when we walk out, we bring before our eyes a 
stream of houses, shops, streets, fields, and the impression of 
the walk, the coherent trace that it leaves in the brain, is in 
part at least pictorial, just as if we stood still and saw the 
scenes shifted in the same order. So our work often consists 
in producing changes seen and remembered as sensible appear- 



446 



LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 



ances. The ploughman's active day is summed up in the 
furrowed field that is pictured in his mind in the evening 
retrospect. The soldier in a field-day remembers less his own 
exertions than the movements of the collective battalions as 
they took place before his eyes. Hence it is that remembered 
actions may be to a great extent remembered appearances, 
and so far the case now in hand is in noways different from 
the preceding. 

It is evident, however, that there must be a remembrance 
of actions by themselves as well as of the changes that they 
bring before the view. We do in fact have a recollection of 
our own active states as such ; we can describe the movements 
made by us, the feelings of pleasant exercise, laborious exertion, 
or reposing fatigue, that we have successively gone through in 
a given day, week, or month. 

This takes us back to what was advanced at the com- 
mencement of the present chapter on the Ideas of movement 
and action. I endeavoured to show that these are constituted 
by re-actuating the circles of movement, but so as to come short 
of the full stimulus required by the action itself ; the remem- 
brance of striking a blow is in reality all but to repeat the 
act, the restraining of the full display being sometimes a 
matter of difficulty. Now successive actions cohere both as 
actions and as ideas ; we may either perform the actions out- 
right, or stop short at the mere idea or vestige of the action. 
Much of our life is spent in going over remembered and ideal 
actions ; and when we recover a work done by us, merely as a 
matter of history and not for the purpose of doing the work 
again, the vestige or idea of the different steps is what passes 
along the mental system. These vestiges of movements 
executed are as really and truly mental possessions or ideas as 
the remembered pictures of the external world through the 
eye. We can revive one or other in the ideal form ; in truth 
our recollections are usually a mixture of the two, inasmuch as 
our sensations are all unavoidably mixed up with movements. 

Now in recalling a series of movements, as for instance a 
dance, simply for our own gratification, because of the agree- 
able feelings that they gave in the reality, we do nothing 



REMEMBRANCE OF OUR OWN ACTIONS. 447 

but revive those vestiges or diminished currents that suffice 
for the purpose of a recollection. This is to live our history 
over again in idea. But when we have acquired the power 
of naming all the various movements in the succession, the 
ideas, as they successively repossess the various organs, sug- 
gest the names of the different steps, and we can then narrate 
the whole in language. It is this power of narrating that we 
usually term the recollection of an event, and that constitutes 
history. With the power of language that belongs to human 
beings, it happens that our recollections of what we have gone 
through do not occur as pure ideas of the actions and scenes 
themselves, but as ideas mixed up with verbal descriptions, 
which last are constantly disposed to intrude themselves into 
our recollections, even when these are not communicated to 
any one. 

The firm adhesion of the ideas or vestiges of our active 
movements is a case of muscular contiguity, like the adhesion 
of the actions themselves in acquiring mechanical habits. I 
cannot find any other law for the association of ideas of 
movements than for actual movements. I have already en- 
deavoured to discuss the circumstances favourable to the 
adhesion of muscular trains, and these would, I conceive, hold 
in the present case also. People that have a facility in 
acquiring mechanical habits would have an equal facility in 
remembering the steps of any performance that they had gone 
through. The greater instance implies the less; the adhesion 
of the movements in full involves the adhesion of the currents 
that stop short of movement. 

The case is altered, as above remarked, by the intrusion 
of language or expression; in so far as we rely upon this, our 
remembrance will be easy or difficult according as our adhe- 
siveness for language is strong or feeble. This is not the only 
instance of impressions retained by the help of some foreign 
machinery more adhesive than themselves. We have seen 
the same thing in the retention of the sensations of the 
inferior senses. 

80. Our past life may, therefore, be conceived as a vast 
stream of spectacle, action, emotion, volition, desire, inter- 



448 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

mingled and complicated in every way, and rendered adherent 
by its unbroken continuity. It being impossible to associate 
all the details, so as to recover them at pleasure, we find in 
experience that only the more impressive facts remain strung 
together in recollection. All the larger epochs and stirring 
incidents readily flow in upon our memory, when we go back 
to some early starting point; while the minor events fail to 
appear on the simple thread of sequence in time, and are 
recalled only by the presence of other circumstances that 
serve to link them with the present. Our habits of recalling 
the past generally lead us to associate events in new con- 
nexions, as when a person recites the history of his early 
education, selecting out of the miscellaneous stream the inci- 
dents that relate to this one point. Our individual history 
becomes thus broken up into sections and partial narratives; 
and to recover the total current, we should find it requisite to 
collect these into one great combination upon the thread of 
strict succession in order of time. 

8 1. I have thus presented a series of examples of the 
working of the adhesive force, termed the principle of Asso- 
ciation by Contiguity. As the subject proceeds there will be 
other opportunities of adding to the illustration. The special 
branch of Moral acquisitions, or Habits, would best find a place 
in a Treatise on Volition. There now only remains some general 
observations on the nature of this great adhesive force. 

I would first remark the difficulty there is in obtaining a 
measure of the absolute force of contiguous adhesiveness in an 
individual character. The modifying circumstances interfere 
so as to perplex the question. There are doubtless local and 
special acquirements, as music, or the verbal memory, both 
which repose in a great measure on the structure of the organ 
of hearing, and not exclusively on the general adhesiveness of 
the brain. The only measure that I can propose for this 
general adhesiveness is the multitude, variety, and facility of 
acquisitions in general, — the ease of acquiring any kind of 
bent, habit, or faculty that may be entered on, — the distinction 
acquired as a learner, in all departments of knowledge, busi- 



PLASTICITY OF EARLY YEARS. 449 

ness, or art. We occasionally meet with characters of this 
description ; the famous ' admirable Crichton/ as usually 
described, is an example of the highest order of the class. 

In the second place, I may advert to the known supe- 
riority of early years as regards this force or plasticity. It is 
impossible to state with any precision the comparative in- 
tensity of the adhesive growth at different ages, but there can 
be no doubt of the fact of its gradual diminution from infancy 
to old age. Bodily acquisitions are easiest while the organs 
are still flexible, apart from the plastic adhesiveness of the 
brain ; hence a maximum age is fixed for receiving recruits in 
the military service. At the present time, I believe the age 
of twenty-three is the extreme term of admission. Up to 
this age any bodily habit is easily assumed ; the moral dis- 
cipline of obedience is also comparatively easy. But for both 
the one and the other the earliest years are the best. We 
must always take account of the obstruction arising from 
adverse bents and acquisitions. In matters where the bodily 
and mental system are not in any way pre-occupied, the age 
of twenty-five is a very plastic age, as, for example, in learning 
business forms, languages, or science. On the other hand, 
the voluntary command of the attention is greatest in mature 
life, a circumstance very much in favour of acquisition. 

I remark finally that there is a temporary adhesiveness as 
distinguished from what is enduring or permanent. I can 
convey a lengthy message from one room to another, but am 
unable to reproduce it next day. The endurance of the first 
impression, while the mind is wholly occupied with it, is no 
surety for its being retained for a week or a month to come. 

The illustration in this chapter has been mainly directed 
upon the enduring acquisitions. We have generally under- 
stood the retainability of an impression to mean the power of 
recalling it at any future time, however remote. But it is 
necessary to take account of the tendency of all acquisitions 
to decay by time ; the rate of decay being dependent on 
various circumstances, and chiefly on the decay of the brain 
itself. It is observed that in old age the impressions that 
survive longest are those of early years. 

G G 






450 LAW OF CONTIGUITY. 

To keep our acquisitions from decaying it is requisite that 
they should be occasionally revived. A language acquired in 
early years may be utterly lost by disuse ; if kept up till 
mature age it will be fixed for life. Sustained practice seems 
particularly necessary in early education : children's acquisi- 
tions are very liable to decompose if not kept up and confirmed 
by new additions. No precise laws have ever been ascertained 
in this department of the human mind. 

The system of cramming is a scheme for making tem- 
porary acquisitions, regardless of the endurance of them. 
Excitable brains, that can command a very great concentra- 
tion of force upon a subject, will be proportionably impressed 
for the time being. By drawing upon the strength of the 
future, we are able to fix temporarily a great variety of impres- 
sions during the exaltation of cerebral power that the excite- 
ment gives. The occasion past, the brain must lie idle for a 
corresponding length of time, while a large portion of the 
excited impressions will gradually perish away. This system 
is extremely unfavourable to permanent acquisitions ; for 
these, the force of the brain should be carefully husbanded 
and temperately drawn upon. Every period of undue excite- 
ment and feverish susceptibility is a time of great waste of 
the plastic energy of the mind on the whole. 



CHAPTER II. 

LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

Present Actions, Sensations, Thoughts, or Emotions tend 
to revive their Like among previous Impressions. 

I. /CONTIGUITY joins together things that are naturally 
V7 juxtaposed, or that are, by any circumstance, pre- 
sented to the mind at the same time, as when we associate 
heat with light, a failing body with a concussion. But in 
addition to this link of reproductive connexion, we find that 
one thing will, by virtue of similarity, recal another sepa- 
rated from it in time ; thus, if I see Lear acted to-day, I am 
put in mind of a former occasion, when I have seen the same 
play acted. 

This tendency to be reminded of past occurrences and 
thoughts of every kind, through their resemblance to some- 
thing present, is here termed the Law or Principle of Simi- 
larity. It is styled by Sir William Hamilton the Law of 
Repetition. He shows it to have been first recognised and 
enunciated by Aristotle.* But its application to explain par- 
ticular phenomena has been gradually extended by many 
successive writers down to the present time. 

2. Some preliminary explanation of the kind of relation 
subsisting between the two principles of Contiguity and 
Similarity is requisite in order to guard against mistakes, and 
especially to prevent a too easy misapprehension as to the 
radical distinctness of the two modes of action in the mental 
framework. When the cohesive link between any two con- 
tiguous actions or images is confirmed by a new occurrence or 
repetition, it is perfectly obvious that the present impression 



* Dissertations on Heid, p. 889. 

gg2 






452 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

must revive the sum total of the past impressions, or reinstate 
the whole mental condition left on the occasion immediately 
preceding. Thus, if I am disciplining myself in the act of 
drawing a round figure with my hand, any one present effort 
must recal the state of the muscular and nervous action, or 
the precise bent acquired at the end of the previous effort, 
while that effort had to reinstate the condition attained at 
the end of the one preceding, and so on. It is only in this 
way that repetition can be of any avail in confirming a phy- 
sical habit or forming an intellectual aggregate. But this 
reinstatement of a former condition by a present act of the 
same kind, is really and truly a case of the operation of the 
associating principle of similarity, or of like recalling like; 
and we here plainly see, that without such recal, the adhesion 
of contiguous things would be impossible. It would appear, 
therefore, that all through the exposition of Contiguity, the 
principle of Similarity has been tacitly assumed; we have 
always taken for granted, that the recurrence of any object to 
the view recalled the total impression made by all the pre- 
vious occurrences, and added its own effect to that total. In 
a word, no one ever doubts the perfect operation of the 
principle of like recalling like, in any of the numerous 
instances above adduced as showing the growth of contiguous 
adhesion. 

But by this tacit assumption of the unfailing operation of the 
force of anything present to reinstate the past impressions of 
the same thing, we restrict ourselves to those cases where the 
reinstatement is sure and certain, in fact to cases of absolute 
identity of the present and past. Such is the nature of the 
instances dwelt upon in the previous chapter : in all of them 
the new action, or the new image, was supposed precisely 
identical with the old, and went simply to reinstate and deepen 
an impression already made. We must, however, now pass 
beyond this class of examples and enter upon cases of a new 
description, where the identity is only partial, and is on that 
account liable to be missed; where the restoration, instead of 
being sure, is doubtful; and where, moreover, the reinstate- 
ment serves higher purposes than the mere iteration and 






SIMILARITY INVOLVED IN CONTIGUITY. 453 

deepening of an impression already made. In all mental 
restorations whatsoever, both Contiguity and Similarity are 
at work; in one class the question is, as to the sufficiency of 
the contiguous bond, the similarity being sure; in another 
class the question is, as to the sufficiency of the attractive 
force of the likeness, the contiguous adhesiveness being be- 
lieved secure. If I chance to meet with a person I have 
formerly seen, and endeavour to remember his name, it will 
depend upon the goodness of a cohesive link whether or not 
I succeed ; there will be no difficulty in my recalling the past 
impression of his personal appearance through the force of 
the present impression; but having recalled the full total 
of the past impressions, I may not be able to recover 
the accompaniment of the name; the contiguity may be at 
fault, although the similarity works its perfect work of resto- 
ring me to my previous conception of the personal aspect. 
If, on the other hand, I see a man on the street, and if I 
have formerly seen a portrait of that man, it is a question 
whether the living reality shall recal the portrait ; the doubt 
hangs not upon the contiguity, or coherence of the parts of 
the picture, if it could be recalled, but upon the chance of 
its being recalled at alj. Where things are identical, the 
operation of similarity in making the present case revive 
the former ones is so certain, that it is not even mentioned ; 
we talk of the goodness of the cohesive bond between the 
revived part and its accompaniments, as if contiguity ex- 
pressed the whole fact of the restoration. To make up for 
this partiality of view, which was indispensable to a clear 
exposition, we now embrace with the same partial and pro- 
minent consideration the element that was left in a tacit con- 
dition, and allow to sink into the same tacit state the one 
that has hitherto been made exclusively prominent.* 

3. In the case of perfect identity between a present and 



* To a mathematical student this would he made at once intelligible by 
saying that in the former chapter the Contiguity is assumed as the vari- 
able element, and the Similarity the constant; in this chapter, Similarity is 
supposed variable and Contiguity constant. 



454 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

past impression the past is recovered and fused with the 
present instantaneously and surely. So quick and unfaltering 
is the process that we lose sight of it altogether; we are 
scarcely made aware of the existence of an associating link of 
similarity in the chain of sequence. When I look at the full 
moon, I am instantly impressed with the state arising from all 
my former impressions of her disc added together ; so natural 
and necessary does this restoration seem that we rarely reflect 
on the principle implied in it, namely, the power of the new 
stimulus to set a-going the nervous currents with all the energy 
acquired in the course of many hundred repetitions of the 
same visual impetus. But when we pass from perfect to im- 
perfect or partial identity, we are more readily made aware of 
the existence of this link of attraction between similars, for we 
find that the restoration sometimes does not take place: cases 
occur where we fail to be struck with a similitude ; the spark 
does not pass between the new currents and the old dormant 
ones. The failure in reinstating the old condition by virtue 
of the present stimulus, is in the main ascribable to imperfect 
identity. When in some new impression of a thing, the 
original form is muffled, obscured, distorted, disguised, or in 
any way altered, it is just a chance if we recognised it ; the 
amount of likeness that is left will have a reviving power, or 
a certain amount of reinstating energy, while the points of 
difference or unlikeness will act in resisting the supervention 
of the old state, and will tend to revive objects like themselves. 
If I hear a musical air that I have been accustomed to, the 
new impression revives the old as a matter of course ; but if 
the air is played with complex harmonies and accompani- 
ments, it is possible that the effect of these additions may be 
to check my recognition of the piece ; the unlike circumstances 
may repel the reinstatement of the old experience more power- 
fully than the remaining likeness attracts it ; and I may 
either find in it no identity whatever with an air previously 
known, or I may identify it with something altogether 
different. If my hold of the essential character of the melody 
is but feeble, and if I am stunned and confounded with the 
new accompaniments, there is every likelihood that I shall not 



MODES OF UNLIKENESS MIXED UP WITH LIKENESS. 455 

experience the restoration of my past hearings of the air 
intended, and consequently I shall not identify the perform- 
ance. 

4. The obstructives that prevent the revival of the past 
through similitude may be classed under the two heads of 
Faintness and Diversity. There are cases where a new im- 
pression is too feeble to strike into the old-established track of 
the same impression and make it alive again, as when we are 
unable to identify the taste of a very weak solution, or to 
make out an object in twilight dimness. The most numerous 
and interesting cases come under the other head of Diversity, 
or mingled likeness and unlikeness ; as when we meet an old 
acquaintance in a new dress, or in circumstances where we 
have never seen the same person before. The modes of this 
diversity are countless and incapable of being classified. We 
might, indeed, include under diversity the other of the two 
heads, seeing that faintness implies diversity of degree, if not 
of any other circumstance ; but I prefer considering the 
obstruction arising from faintness by itself, after which we 
shall proceed to the larger field of instances constituted by 
unlikeness in other respects. 

5. The difficulty or facility of resuming a past mental con- 
dition at the suggestion of a present similitude will depend 
upon the hold that the past impression has acquired ; it is 
much easier to revive a familiar image than an unfamiliar by 
the force of a new presentation. We shall, tb erefore, have to 
keep this circumstance in view, among others, in the course of 
our illustration of the law of similarity. 

It has to be seriously considered how far mental character, 
or intellectual peculiarity, affects the power of reviving 
similars, or of bringing together like things in spite of the 
repulsion of unlike accompaniments. There is much to be 
explained in the preferences shown by different minds in the 
objects that they most readily recal to the present view ; which 
preferences determine varieties of character, such as the scientific 
and artistic minds. The explanation of these differences 
was carried up to a certain point under the Law of Contiguity ; 
but if I am not mistaken there is still a residue referable to 



456 



LAW OF SIMILARITY. 



the existence of various modes and degrees of susceptibility to 
the force of Similarity. From all that I have been able to 
observe, the two energies of contiguous adhesion and of attrac- 
tion of similars do not rise and fall together in the character ; 
we may have one feeble and the other strong, in all propor- 
tions and degrees of adjustment. I believe, moreover, that 
there is such a thing as an energetic power of recognising 
similarity in general, and that this is productive of very 
striking consequences. Whether I shall be able to impress 
these convictions upon my readers will depend upon the 
success of my detailed exposition of this second leading pecu- 
liarity of our intellectual nature. 



FEEBLENESS OF IMPRESSION. 

6, We commence with the case of Faintness or Feebleness in 
the present, or suggesting, impression considered as an obstacle to 
the revival of the corresponding previous impression. There is 
in every instance a certain degree of feebleness that will militate 
against the efficacy of the present image to reinstate the old 
track worn by the same image in its former advent. When 
an extremely faint suggestion in the present answers com- 
pletely the purpose of reviving the old currents, we must 
consider that the restoring action of similarity is unusually 
vigorous in that mind, or for that class of impressions. Thus 
if by a very feeble solution of salt in water, such as occurs in 
many laud springs, the impression on the tongue is sufficient 
to revive in one person, and not in another, the past state of 
mind produced by the tasting of salt, we should naturally 
remark that in the one the attraction of similars in the matter 
of taste is more vigorous than in the other. Doubtless there 
is another circumstance that would make a difference without 
any positive distinction in the character of the intellectual 
force of similarity, that is the familiarity with the substance 
tasted combined with a habit of attending to minute dif- 
ferences, in other words a concentration of the mind upon the 
effect ; but where this difference, due to professional habits, 
does not exist, the only interpretation we can put upon the 



REINSTATEMENT BY FEEBLE IMPRESSIONS. 457 

circumstance is that now supposed, — an inequality in the 
power of reinstating a past condition of mind by a similar 
one present. If without any express education, one person 
can discern common salt in a solution when present at the 
rate of eight grains to the gallon, while another person 
requires twelve grains per gallon to be present, and a third 
twenty, then these numbers would roughly express the 
strength of the force of similarity on the matter of Taste in 
the three persons respectively. We cannot infer from this that 
in other impressions, as in Smell or Hearing, there would be 
the same distinction in these three parties, inasmuch as the 
character of the special organ counts for something. The 
structure of the tongue may be such as to make a slight taste 
in one person as impressive in the conscious mind as a stronger 
taste in another person : while in order to ascribe the dif- 
ference to an intellectual peculiarity, such as the intensity of 
the attraction of similars, we should have to suppose the same 
solution to yield an equal sensation or an equal intensity of 
the feeling of taste. 

7. Such is a general example taken at random to show 
what is meant by the revival of impressions under the impedi- 
ment that feebleness puts in the way. I might go systema- 
tically through the Sensations of the various Senses to gather 
illustrations of the same fact. (Movements apart from Sen- 
sations do not furnish cases in point). In the various sensations 
of Organic Life, there occur examples of difficult reinstatement, 
through feebleness of the suggesting sensation. I may 
experience a certain uneasy sensation, which I cannot describe 
or recognise, because of its being too faintly marked to repro-^ 
duce the old accustomed impression of the same thing. It 
may be a derangement of the stomach, or the liver, or the 
brain, such as I have experienced before and possess a durable 
conception of, but being too little prominent to strike into the 
old track it reminds me of nothing, and I cannot tell what it 
is. By and by it increases somewhat, and becomes powerful 
enough to reinstate some likeness of it in the past, and I then 
know its character. If on the one hand, the feeling is located 
in an organic tissue easily inflamed into sensibility by a light 



458 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

impression, or if on the other, the general power of similarity 
is comparatively strong, and the recognition of organic pains 
and pleasures rapid and easy, a very slight manifestation 
makes me at once aware of what is happening to me. This 
keen organic sensibility may be noted as a peculiarity of some 
constitutions, making the individual extremely self-conscious, 
in the sense of being alive to every passing change of organic 
state ; generating hypochondria and the alternation of fears 
and hopes regarding one's bodily welfare. The peculiarity 
will be occasionally found rising to a morbid extreme ; as 
when the individual never passes an hour without solicitude 
on the matter of health and mortality. Obtuseness of feeling 
to what is going on within the various bodily parts is a defect 
fraught with dangerous neglect ; while on the other hand a 
needless amount of distress and a needless waste of precaution 
may be the result of too much sensibility, whether this have 
its origin in the sense or in the intellect. 

8. I have already cited an example from Taste. There 
would be no material difference in the circumstances of a case 
of Smell. When a very faint odour is recognised or identified, 
this shows that notwithstanding the faintness of the impres- 
sion the previous sum total of the same smell has been 
brought back. If two persons be subjected to the same odour, 
as in walking through a garden, and if one recognises it while 
the other feels it not, the difference is to be referred to one or 
more of the three main circumstances involved in such a per- 
ception, — namely, greater familiarity with the odorous sub- 
stance, greater acuteness of the organ, or greater force of the 
attraction of similars. If both parties are known to be alike 
familiar with the supposed odour, we must refer the difference 
to one of the two remaining circumstances ; and if by some 
further test we could find that they had equal delicacy of 
organ, that is, if it could be shown that the same smell caused 
a nearly equal force of sensation or consciousness, the explana- 
tion would be thrown upon the last of the three considerations, 
the intellectual force of similarity, which we are now bent 
upon tracing out. If a person is not remarkable for being 
excited, agitated, in other words made highly sensitive, by 



TESTS OF THE ATTRACTIVE FORCE OF SIMILARITY. 459 

strong odours, while yet able to identify those that are feeble, 
we must ascribe to such a person a large development of the 
power of similarity ; for if the discrimination were due to the 
easy inflammability of the membrane of the nose, we should 
find that a very great excitement would be produced when 
the action was strong. The experiment to decide between 
sense and intellect as the principal agent of the discriminating 
faculty might be made thus. Expose two persons to a strong 
repulsive smell, assafcetida for example. Ascertain by their 
manner of excitement and by their expression of their feelings, 
whether it affects them equally, or nearly so. We cannot 
expect to determine this point with very great nicety, but in 
a rude way the thing is possible. Suppose we find that they 
are almost equally affected by the odour, or, have a nearly 
equal degree of repulsive sensation. Let this experiment pass 
over for some time, and subject the same persons to an 
extremely faint exhalation of the same substance. Let it be 
so faint at first as to be imperceptible, and raise it by very 
slow degrees, until one of the two is struck with the idea that 
assafcetida is present. If the one notices it a considerable 
time before the other has been affected to the same point, the 
two must differ in the general power of reinstating like by 
like, or in the attraction of similars ; that is, we must attribute 
the superior smelling acuteness of the one to something 
different from the susceptibility of the sentient surface, for 
that has been put to the test and found equal in both. 

9. The sense of Touch does not appear to furnish any 
instructive case of the action of reinstatement made difficult 
by feebleness of impression, for we can usually command any 
degree of contact that we please. We may, however, derive 
examples in point from Hearing. It often happens that 
sounds are so faint as to be barely identifiable, in which case 
we shall observe one person making them out and another 
missing them. The difference of acuteness must be referred 
as before to familiarity, delicacy of ear, or facility of reinstate- 
ment, one or other. The influence of familiarity, the first of 
the three causes, is well exemplified in sounds. Compare the 
hearing of our mother tongue with the hearing of a foreign 






460 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 



tongue ; every one knows how easy it is to catch up an utter- 
ance in the one, even when very faintly pronounced, and how 
utterly we fail in the other under like circumstances. The 
same contrast is observed between a familiar voice and the 
voice of a stranger ; persons partially deaf identify the speech 
of those about them, while others to be as easily understood 
must raise their voice to a much higher pitch. This fact as 
to the greater readiness of reviving a deeply printed impres- 
sion obtains all through the field of associations by similarity ; 
the readiness follows the growth of the adhesive bond of con- 
tiguity under repeated conjunctions of the associated things. 
The more thoroughly accustomed the mental system is to an 
impression, the lighter the touch needed to make it present 
at any moment. 

10. The same line of illustration can be carried out under 
the Sense of Sight. There is a point of twilight dimness 
when objects begin to be doubtful ; they fail to reinstate the 
corresponding previous impressions whereby their identity is 
made apparent. Haziness in the intervening sky, and mere 
distance, have the same effect. In those circumstances we 
find that an object can be identified by one person and not by 
others equally well situated for discerning it. Familiarity 
may be the main cause of the difference, as when a sailor 
identifies a speck in the horizon as a ship of particular build. 
If not attributable to this cause, the superiority of one person 
over another in discernment must be ascribed to one or other 
of the remaining causes, namely, the sensitiveness of the eye, 
or the force of similarity. If by any appropriate test, such as 
the one above described for smell, we could prove the eyes of 
two persons to be equally impressible to degrees of light, 
the difference of discernment would fall to be attributed to a 
difference in the force of reinstatement of like by like. 

1 1. In the case of very exalted acuteness of sense, such as 
we witness among the Indians, who can discern the tread of 
horses at a great distance by applying the ear to the ground, 
and who have also a great degree of long-sightedness, we are 
to refer principally to the first of the above-named circum- 
stances for the explanation, that is, to familiarity, or education. 



UNUSUAL ACUTENESS OF THE SENSES. 461 

It may be that a hereditary acuteness of sense becomes deve- 
loped in that state of life, but practice is undoubtedly the 
main cause of the remarkable difference in this respect be- 
tween these savage tribes and the generality of mankind. 
For we are to remark that their education is not simply a 
frequent repetition of those sensations of the tramp of horses 
or men on the ear, but the concentration of the brain upon 
the sense on those occasions, whereby an intense stretch of 
attention habitually accompanies the act of listening. A sense 
can always be developed to a high degree by an intent applica- 
tion of the entire force of the brain to its sensations. The 
degree of voluntary attention given to an observation of sense 
will at any time make the sensation more acute ; a habit of 
absorbing attention will generate a permanent acuteness at the 
expense of attention to other things. A painter will be the 
more impressed with a landscape that he is deaf to the song 
of birds, the hum of insects, or the murmur of the breeze ; the 
whole soul passing into one sense aggrandizes that sense and 
starves the rest. 

12. The acuteness of the senses in animals may in like 
manner be accounted for. The scent of the dog resolves itself 
into the identification of an exceedingly faint impression. An 
effluvium on the nostrils of a pointer revives the former 
impression of the smell of a hare, while on the human nose 
the same effluvium is utterly devoid of effect. Here we must 
attribute the distinction neither to education nor to the force 
of the association of similarity, but to the acuteness of the 
smelling organ. Any given smell will produce a far more 
intense sensation in a dog than in a man. If we take a scent 
sufficiently strong to be felt by both, as when the hare is 
brought close enough to be felt as a smell on the human nose, 
the man is calm in his manifestations, whereas the dog is 
excited almost to madness. By this we can see that such is 
the organization of the smelling organ of the dog that impres- 
sions made on it are transmitted to the brain in a highly 
magnified state ; and further, that the brain is specially 
inflammable to a particular class of sensations of smell, an 
effect to which nothing corresponding is found in the human 



462 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

constitution. Even if the smell of a hare were multiplied a 
thousand times in the human nose, and made equal to the 
impression made on the brain in the dog, it would not follow 
that the same maddening excitement would follow ; this is an 
additional circumstance growing out of the emotional nature 
of the animal, or out of the deep-seated circles of its brain. 

The far-sightedness of birds depends in part on the adap- 
tation of their eyes to distant vision. It corresponds with the 
far-sightedness of persons habituated to remote objects, or to 
the change that age makes in the lenses of the human eye. 
We have had occasion to notice the superior development of 
the adapting muscles of the eye in birds, Avhereby the organ 
can go through a greater range of adjustment than is in the 
power of other animals. 

There thus appears to be but few cases where we can 
decisively attribute acuteness in identifying objects under 
feeble impressions to the purely intellectual part of the pro- 
cess, the reinstatement of the old by the new through the 
force of likeness. This intellectual peculiarity is by no means 
prominently illustrated by this class of examples ; still it is 
proper for us to allude to them as being cases that unques- 
tionably involve the operation of the principle. 

SIMILARITY IN DIVERSITY. — SENSATIONS. 

1 3. We now approach the case that contains the greatest 
amount of interesting applications — the case of similarity dis- 
guised by mixture with foreign elements, the like in the midst 
of the unlike. There is often very great difficulty in reco- 
gnising an old familiar object owing to alterations that have 
been made upon it. Coming back after a lapse of years to a 
place that we had lived in, we find houses and streets and 
fields and persons so altered that we fail to identify them ; the 
differences that have overgrown the permanent features are in 
many cases such as to destroy their power of reinstating the 
ancient impressions. When likeness is thus surrounded with 
diversity, it is a doubtful point whether the attraction of 
similars will succeed in reviving the old by means of the new. 



SIMILARITY OPERATING IN SPEECH. 463 

In these cases of doubtful and difficult reinstatement, we come 
to observe great differences in the intellectual reach of indi- 
viduals ; out of a number of persons placed in a similar 
predicament, some will be struck with the likeness, the flash 
of identity will come over them, and the past will stand side 
by side with its muffled likeness in the present ; others again 
will see no identity, the attraction of the new for the old will 
in them be overborne and quenched by the surrounding 
diversity. 

To trace the workings of the attractive force of similarity 
in its struggles with the obstruction of unlike accompaniments, 
I count one of the most interesting problems of the human 
mind ; and I trust that in the course of the illustration that is 
to occupy the remainder of the present chapter, my readers 
will grow to be of the same opinion. Although any natural 
defect in this link of reproduction is perhaps less capable of 
being made up by artificial means than in the case of con- 
tiguity, yet we shall see that here too there are circumstances 
under our control that have an undoubted efficacy in clearing 
the way for the reviving stroke of similarity. 

14. Before proceeding to the main subject under the 
present head, namely, the Sensations, I shall advert to the 
one case of Action or Movement that furnishes interesting 
examples of the working of the present law, I mean articulate 
action, or Speech. In the numerous and various trains of 
articulation entering into our education in language, there are 
many instances of recurring likeness in the midst of unlike- 
ness, leading to the revival of the past by the present. We 
are constantly liable to be reminded of past sayings of our 
own and of other people, and passages of writings that we 
have read, by hitting on catch-words or identical phrases, 
at a time when our thoughts are running in some quite 
different channnel. The single word 'phrenzy' uttered with 
emphasis will recal, in a mind familiar with the passage, 
'The poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling;' the principal 
epithet in such a case being enough to reinstate the entire 
connected train. By the suggestion of common words we can 
thus leap from one passage to another by the remotest fetches 



464 



LAW OF SIMILAKITY. 



through an endless succession of recollections. The character 
of the mind will determine the prevailing character of the 
revived sayings ; in some minds they will be poetical and 
ornate ; iu another prose melody will have the preference ; in 
a third, epigram and wit ; in a fourth, sententious wisdom and 
prudential saws. The sayings and passages that have been 
most impressed upon us in the course of our education will 
necessarily take a lead in coming over us through the medium 
of common phrases ; and the general power of similarity in 
the mind, modified by the quality of the articulate circles in 
particular, will determine the abundance of this class of re- 
vivals, in other words, the quantity of speech flowing into the 
utterance of the individual. The force of Contiguity strings 
together in the mind words that have been uttered together ; 
the force of similarity brings forward recollections from dif- 
ferent times and circumstances and connexions, and makes a 
new train out of many old ones. I may have learnt at one 
time a passage from Milton, at another an extract from Pope, 
on a third occasion a piece from Campbell ; mere contiguity 
would enable me when reminded of the commencing words of 
any of these passages to repeat the whole ; but the energetic 
working of similarity would enable me to break into any one 
or all of them while speaking on some remote subject. I 
chance to fall into two or three words resembling an expres- 
sion in one of the pieces, and notwithstanding the diversity of 
the context, the old stream of recollection is re-constituted, 
and the entire passage brought within my command. The 
attraction of sameness is here manifested as overcoming the 
repulsion of diversity. I am uttering a connected series of 
words, and among these, one, two, or three, have by chance 
the echo of one of the falls of an old utterance ; instantly I 
feel myself plunged in the entire current of the past, and may 
avail myself of any portion of it to serve my present end in 
speaking. Neither the unlikeness of the context nor the 
totally foreign nature of the subject matter will stifle the 
reviving action in a mind very much alive to articulate effects, 
although both have a share in resisting the stroke of resusci- 
tation. I assume that there is in each mind a special degree 






SENSATIONS OF ORGANIC LIFE. 465 

of the attraction of similarity for articulate utterances, just as 
there is a special degree of contiguous adhesiveness ; and both 
have their measure, although in different ways. The adhe- 
siveness is measured by the fewness of repetitions necessary to 
fix a connected speech in the memory ; the other is measured 
by the amount of repulsion and disparity that can be over- 
come in bringing an old train forward by the force of a 
new one. 

Unlikeness of circumstances and situations is no bar to 
the revival of past expressions, any more than difference of 
verbal context and subject matter. A word casually spoken 
in some present emergency will often revive a stream of recol- 
lections and incidents long past, where that word chanced to 
figure as an important turning point of the history. It is 
hardly possible to fall into the phrase ' every man to do his 
duty/ without being put on the track of our recollection of 
Nelson's last victory. The word ' duty' is liable at anytime 
to bring up the Duke of Wellington. These verbal coin- 
cidences are one great link of connexion between us and our 
past experiences ; they bear a full part in putting us ever and 
anon upon the track of some bygone incident of our history. 
The more alive we are to the influence of words, the larger is 
the share of reviving efficacy that belongs to them. 

The hold that we have of language not being confined to 
the articulate organs, but extending over the senses of hearing 
and sight, and being besides influenced by the emotions, we 
shall have to recur to the topic on various occasions. The impor- 
tance of language in the operations of intellect generally also 
justifies a frequent reference to the subject. 

15. To pass to the Sensations. In Organic Life there are 
many cases of a sensation repeated with new admixtures, 
serving to disguise its character, and prevent its recalling the 
former instances of the same impressions. It often happens 
that the same organic state is produced by very different 
causes. A shock of grief, a glut of pleasure, a fit of over- 
working, an accidental loss of two or three nights' rest, may 
all end in the very same kind of headache, stupor, or feeling 
of discomfort; but the great difference in the antecedents 

H H 



466 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

may prevent our identifying the occasions. The derangement 
caused by grief is more like]y to recal a previous occasion of 
a similar grief, than to suggest a time of overdone enjoy- 
ment ; the sameness in organic state is, in the case of such a 
parallel, nullified by the repulsion of opposites in the accom- 
panying circumstances; a state of grief does not permit a 
time of pleasure to be recalled and dwelt upon; the loss of a 
parent at home is not compatible with the remembrance of 
a long night of gaiety abroad. Hence we do not identify 
the supposed state of organic depression with all the previous 
recurrences of the same state; unless indeed a scientific educa- 
tion has made us aware of the sameness of the physical effects 
resulting from the most dissimilar causes. 

16. We have in the case of Taste examples of a like 
nature. A taste may be so disguised by mixture as to be 
undiscernible ; the presence of the other ingredients operating 
to resist the reviving power of the one that we desire to 
identify. In a solution of Epsom salts we should not be able 
to discern a small quantity of sugar. The saline bitter of the 
salts acts upon the tongue and the sense, so as to render it 
impossible that the sugary taste should have any influence. 
This is an example of the weak borne down by the powerful. 
Again, when malt liquor becomes sour, we are unable to dis- 
criminate any longer the alcoholic taste, the action of the acid 
on the palate overwhelms every other sensation. If in such 
a case, the alcohol is still discernible by any one person, when 
others fail to perceive it, we should say that the power of 
reinstatement for alcohol was strong in such a one's mind, 
either from old familiarity or a great susceptibility to this 
particular impression, or from the more deep-seated cause of 
a vigorous attraction of similars of every description. 

17. Hitherto I have spoken of sensations identified be- 
cause of their actual sameness, the difficulty of reinstatement 
arising from other sensations mixed up with them. A case 
of greater complicacy and more importance is furnished by the 
existence of sensations really different, but having something in 
common. Take as an instance the tastes of the various wines ; 
these are all different, and if similarity acted only in absolute 






CLASSIFICATION. 467 

sameness, port would remind us only of port, claret of claret, 
madeira of madeira, and so on. But we find that there is so 
much of a common influence in all wines, that any one of 
them can remind us of a great many others, we at the same time 
noting points of difference when they are thus brought into 
comparison. It is this common influence, with its suggesting 
power, that has led mankind to constitute what is termed a 
class, or a genus, ' wine/ comprehending many widely scat- 
tered individuals. The identification of likeness in the midst 
of unlikeness, in other words of a common property, is the 
essence of this classifying operation. A class differs from a 
catalogue by virtue of a common resemblance in the midst 
of diversity. This class, ' wines/ identified through their 
common organic sensation and taste, is merged in a larger 
class when spirituous liquors come to be known. There is 
felt to be an identity between the principal effect of these 
liquors on the system, and the effect of the various members 
of the vinous group. The class is now extended ; but because 
of there being some features common to wines that do not 
attach to spirits, these are still held together in a group by 
themselves, subordinate to the larger group, or as a species 
coming under the other as a genus. The addition of malt 
liquors to the comparison extends the identity still farther, 
and enlarges the class of substances that suggest one another 
by virtue of the common quality of causing intoxication. 
These malt liquors being themselves identical in more points 
than those common to them with wines and distilled spirits, 
they also make a small species by themselves contained in the 
comprehensive genus of intoxicating drinks. 

It was not discovered at first that this influence, common 
to so many substances derived from such various natural 
sources (the grape, the sugar-cane, barley, oats, rice, &c), was 
due to one distinct ingredient occurring in them all under 
various combinations. The identification had proceeded 
solely on their common influence on the human system, and 
not from discerning the recurrence of the common element, 
alcohol. Had the grouping proceeded on this perception, the 
case would have been exactly like those above described, 

H H2 



468 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

where a taste or smell is identified in its mixtures with other 
tastes or smells. But the substances were classed together 
without men knowing whether it was that many different 
liquids had the same action on the human body, or that there 
was one substance that pervaded many compounds, to which 
the influence was solely owing. It was a generalization 
of a common internal feeling, not of a common external 
object. 

Another example akin to the foregoing is furnished by 
the pungent odours. The influence of the various kinds of 
snuff upon the nose is so well marked that we readily identify 
it notwithstanding differences of aroma or flavour. Upon 
this similarity we group all the different varieties together, 
and make a class of bodies, any one of which may be used for 
any other when the common effect of pungency is desired. 
The kinds of snuff would doubtless also be identified on the 
ground of their common origin, the tobacco plant, like wines 
by the grape. But looking at the subjective sensation of the 
snuffs, we find that this assimilates itself to a like sensation 
produced from other bodies ; thus the odour of smelling salts 
may by similarity recal the odour of snuff, and the two different 
substances will in this way come together in the mind. If we 
have at any time acquired the impression of hartshorn, this im- 
pression also might be recalled in virtue of its resemblance to 
these others ; we should then have three distinct experiences 
brought up from different times and circumstances of our 
past history to the present view, these experiences presenting 
three different substances lying quite remote from one another 
in nature, but now drawn together in the mind, from exerting 
on it a common influence. If our acquaintance with pungent 
odours had been still greater, others would be recalled to join 
the group already formed, and we should have amassed from 
far and near a multitude of recollections strung upon one 
common thread of resemblance, and these recollections would 
thenceforth be held together as a group in the mind, forming 
what we term a class, a genus, or a generalization of agreeing 
objects. 

In this instance there is no external element common to 



SIMILARITY IN TOUCH. 469 

all the bodies producing the pungent effect ; the classification 
is purely based on the common sensation of smell. The 
smelling salts and hartshorn are identical, inasmuch as both 
yield ammonia ; but the effluvium of snuff is not ammonia, 
although found to bear a resemblance to it in chemical con- 
stitution. 

These various identifications put to the test the force of 
similarity in different individuals. While seized by some 
minds, they are wholly missed by others ; and the reason for 
their being missed usually resolves itself into one or other of 
the defects already recounted ; — the obscuration of the differing 
ingredients in the combination, the want of good previous 
impressions, obtuseness of the sense itself, or feebleness in the 
action of similarity generally. Possibly also the attention 
may never be turned upon the subject. A distinct effort made 
to recal some past object resembling a present one has a 
chance to succeed, when without such effort the identity would 
never flash on the mind. 

The greater the diversity that muffles up a likeness, the 
greater the intellectual stretch requisite in reinstating the past 
on the mere force of likeness ; the former impressions must be 
good, the sense delicate, or the recalling stroke of similarity 
in general vigorous, in order to succeed in a case where the 
discrepancy is so strong as nearly to overwhelm the agree- 
ment. 

1 8. The illustration of similarity in Touch might be very 
copious. I prefer, however, to reserve the largest share of our 
space for the two highest senses. 

The intellectual sensations of Touch may be said to start 
from the feeling of a plurality of points ; this, combined with 
movement, gives the sense of surface both as to quality and as 
to size and shape. On all possible varieties of surface we may 
have identification at work. Thus if I take in my hand a 
wooden ball, the turn given to my fingers in handling it rein- 
states the old engrained impression of the round shape got 
from the various balls that I have handled in my time. The 
feeling of the surface may also revive the impression of other 
surfaces not globular ; the impression belonging to the material 



470 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

— whether fir, oak, beech, mahogany, &c. The shape is not a 
sufficiently powerful disguise to prevent my identifying the 
substance with my former recollections of the same timber 
in many different shapes. A blind person accustomed to 
discriminate by touch what others discriminate by sight, would 
not be distracted by altered form ; he might be distracted by 
differences of polish ; the remaining similarity in that case 
being too faint to waken up the former impressions of the 
same material. 

We can generally identify any substance touched as being 
wood, stone, metal, woollen, silk, cotton, linen, &c. Under 
very considerable differences of form and fabric, these cha- 
racteristic kinds of material can still be discerned by the force 
of similarity. In cases where one sort approaches very closely 
to another, as in the approximation of cotton to woollen cloth, 
we have those difficult and testing examples where one person 
will succeed and another fail in detecting the true resem- 
blance. So in the viscid and powdery substances that come 
under the hands of the dyer, painter, potter, baker, cook, &c, 
there are cases of easy, and of difficult identity of touch ; 
variations occasionally happen such as to blind the sense of 
identity. It is when a very small trace of likeness is sufficient 
to restore the past impression of the material, and with it the 
former experience as to its character, that the practised hand 
and the acute sense manifest their power. Among the qualities 
of Minerals the feeling to the touch is included. 

19. To take next the sense of Hearing. The analysis of 
sounds has shown us the complexity of the characters attach- 
ing to any one individual sound, and to what extent identity 
in some of these may be disguised by differences in others. 
For example, the pitch of a note may be readily identified 
when sounded on some voice or instrument familiar to us ; 
but on a strange instrument it is less easy to make out the 
identity. The change of quality in the note, the greater or 
less emphasis, the different duration of the sound, as in com- 
paring a piano note with an organ, all tend to disguise the 
pitch and to render a more delicate or a more cultivated ear 
necessary for its discernment. Any natural obtuseness of 



MUSICAL AND ARTICULATE SOUNDS. 471 

sensibility to the attribute of pitch will be demonstrated by- 
such a trial as this ; for if the same note be played feebly on 
the violin and thundered on the organ, the great disparity of 
emphasis will confound the ear, and destroy the sense of what 
is common to the two. We have formerly seen that the 
delicate appreciation of pitch is the foremost requisite of a 
musical ear ; being a point of character that a musical educa- 
tion tends to improve. When thoroughly cultivated, the 
ear is able to identify every note on the scale, however 
sounded ; no distracting accompaniment ought to be able to 
disguise this, which is the first attribute of a sound as regards 
musical composition. 

The property of articulateness of sound is very apt to be 
disguised beyond the reach of identity by strange accompani- 
ments. Our ear for articulation is formed in the first instance 
on the voices around us ; we identify with ease a letter or a 
word as pronounced by those ; in fact, the casual peculiarities 
of their manner become as it were fused with our sense of the 
articulations themselves. A child born in Yorkshire acquires 
an ear for the vowels and consonants of the alphabet as 
sounded in Yorkshire. Passing into Middlesex, the articula- 
tions correspond without being identical ; and it puts a con- 
siderable strain upon the force of reinstatement to identify 
the old words under the new utterance. Such an experiment 
would show whether the ear is good as respects the essential 
quality of articulate form, just as the trials above alluded to 
show the degree of delicacy as regards the pitch of a note. 
Some ears are but faintly susceptible to the distinctiveness of 
the articulations, or to the essential difference between one 
vowel and another, and between one consonant and those 
closely allied to it. If such ears happen to be acutely sensible 
to the qualities of different voices, and to differences of em- 
phasis, or stress, they will be more strongly acted on by the 
disagreements than by the agreements, and the identification 
will sometimes be a matter of extreme uncertainty. 

The illustration takes a wider sweep when we suppose a 
continuous flow of a sound, as in a musical performance or a 
consecutive address. The effects on the ear being more varied, 



472 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

there is greater scope for tracing similarities, and more oppor- 
tunity for the obstruction arising from diversity. We can 
commonly identify an air that we have once known on all 
varieties of instruments, and with or without harmonies. But 
it will repeatedly happen to persons little accomplished in 
musical matters to be confounded with a known air when 
played on a full band, while they could readily identify it on 
a single instrument. Musicians can also identify the key on 
which a piece is composed, although this point of identity 
must be enveloped in the widest differences as regards every- 
thing else. We are accustomed to find a common emotion in 
many compositions ; we classify airs as martial, gay, solemn, 
sacred, melancholy, &c. In so far as there is any reality in 
these distinctions, they are made out by the force of similarity 
recalling the past, and scattered examples of an effect felt at 
the present moment. A more substantial agreement is that 
commonly found in the compositions of the same master. 
Let a composer vary his works as he may, there is a manner 
that usually sits upon every one of them ; this manner the 
hearers get accustomed to, and identify on almost any 
occasion. The identification in the midst of difference is not 
difficult with the more original composers, — Handel, Beet- 
hoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, &c; there are others less cha- 
racteristic than these, and giving scope to a nicer and more 
practised sense. 

I have repeatedly remarked a contrast as subsisting 
between the ear for Music and the ear for Speech. These two 
modes of addressing the same sense affect for the most part 
different susceptibilities of the organ. Pitch is the leading 
quality in music, articulation the main peculiarity of speech ; 
and a good ear for the one may be a very indifferent ear for 
the other. In listening to speech, therefore, the effects iden- 
tified by the ear are considerably different from those above 
mentioned as belonging to music, although agreeing in one or 
two particulars. The foremost quality is articulateness, upon 
which hangs all our perception of meaning ; to this succeed 
pronunciation, accent, cadence, and the accompaniments of 
manner and gesticulation. (The difference between one voice 



SOURCES OF DIVERSITY IN ARTICULATE UTTERANCE. 473 

and another should also be taken into account among the 
diversifying circumstances.) By ' pronunciation ' I here mean 
simply the manner of articulating the vowels and consonants 
and separate vocables of the language, as treated of in our 
pronouncing dictionaries. By ' accent ' I understand that 
indescribable accompaniment with the voice, termed also 
' twang ' or ' brogue/ and which constitutes the indelible dis- 
tinction between English, Irish, Scotch, Americans, French, 
&c, and may subsist along with a perfect sameness of arti- 
culate pronunciation. * Cadence/ I take to mean something 
more than accent, being the modulation of the voice in con- 
secutive utterance ; the peculiar form of elocution fallen upon 
with the view of making speech agreeable to the ear of the 
listener ; it is in fact the melody of music or speech. This too is 
natural to some extent, but differing far more among the dif- 
ferent inhabitants of the same province, than accent does. Vocal 
organization, mental character, and education modify the 
cadence of the voice to very different tunes. Moreover there 
is one cadence for conversation, another for reading, a third 
for public address ; oratory consists of the most highly 
wrought, the most rich and various cadences that the speaker 
can command. The ' accompaniments of manner and gesti- 
culation ' which come to be looked upon as a part of speech, 
being interpreted by the hearer just as much as the articulate 
syllables themselves, are likewise a source of diversity, 
inasmuch as they are conventionally different while having a 
certain community of character founded on the natural expres- 
sion of feeling. If we are accustomed to the very slight 
degree of gesticulation practised in this country, the action of 
a foreigner is perplexing, and distracts instead of aiding us in 
comprehending his meaning. 

Taking all these sources of diversity in connexion with the 
one main feature of articulate utterance, we may derive an 
unlimited fund of examples of reinstatement made difficult by 
unlike accompaniments. Voice, pronunciation, accent, cadence, 
and gesticulation, are inseparable from articulation ; and we 
become accustomed to the sound of words as beset with a 
particular mode of each of these effects. Often indeed we 



474 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

take up a meaning from manner alone. Accordingly, when 
we come to listen to strangers, to the people of another 
province, to foreigners, we experience the difficulty of iden- 
tifying the articulation in the midst of unusual combinations. 
The goodness of the ear for articulation proper is submitted to 
a trying ordeal, as the ear for pitch is tested by the sound of 
a strange instrument. The trial is greatest of all when we are 
endeavouring to catch up a foreign language, the ear being as 
yet unfamiliarized with the new articulations. Here the one 
fact of the articulation of vowels and consonants needs to make 
itself felt amid the distraction of a manifold variety of other 
effects. I know nothing that proves so decisively the goodness 
of the articulate sensibility of the ear as the rapidity of 
understanding a foreigner speaking his own language. The 
power of identifying the essentials of the articulation in the 
diversity of all else, is in such circumstances conspicuously 
manifested. It will happen, however, that a person is more 
than usually sensitive to some of the accompaniments that do 
not concern the conveyance of the meaning ; an ear strongly 
impressed with the accent and cadence, and permitting itself 
to be very much engrossed with the different turns of the 
emphasis and modulation, is by that circumstance rendered 
more obtuse to the articulate character or to the meaning of 
the words. The thunder of a diverse and unaccustomed 
cadence drowns the still small voice of expressive utterance. 
An acute ear for oratory is thus a great obstruction to the 
acquirement of languages ; an eye unduly oppressed with ges- 
ticulate display is an evil in the same way. In listening to 
our own language spoken in the style that we are accus- 
tomed to, the sensitiveness to those accompaniments is in our 
favour, and brings home the meaning all the more power- 
fully ; but when they are totally changed in character, as 
when we listen to a Frenchman or an Italian, we are just as 
much put out in identifying the articulation as in the other 
case we were assisted. The reinstatement thus depends in 
part upon the power of attraction we have for the point 
of sameness, and in part on our not being too sensitive and too 
easily laid hold of by the points of difference. We shall every- 






SIMILARITIES IN ADDRESSES LISTENED TO. 475 

where observe the influence of both these conditions in 
bringing on the reviving stroke of identity. 

20. The ear, along with the articulate organs, is, as 
already remarked, a matrix for holding together our recollec- 
tions of language. A speech heard is in part remembered as 
a connected series of auditory impressions. Our recollections 
of this class are likewise liable to be recalled by similarity, 
even under circumstances of considerable diversity. We can 
scarcely listen to any address without being reminded of many 
past addresses, through the occurrence of phrases, tones, and 
peculiarities that lead us into some formerly experienced track 
of impressions on our ear. The greater our susceptibility to 
the articulate quality that governs distinctness of meaning, 
the more readily shall we fall upon previous addresses that 
correspond in phraseology ; if we are more alive to tone, 
accent, and cadence, these qualities will preside over the 
recal of the former occasions when we were in the position of 
listeners. In this way we are led to detect similarities of 
manner and phrase in different speakers ; we hunt out imita- 
tion and plagiarism, and bring on comparisons among various 
styles of address. When similarity has brought up the 
remembrance of a past speaker, we have the further oppor- 
tunity of noting differences ; but this last operation always 
supposes that similarity has done its work in confronting the 
past with what is now before us. As regards the diversities 
that may obstruct the reviving impetus of likeness, they may 
lie in the context of the agreeing phrases, in the other pecu- 
liarities not connected with meaning, or in the subject matter 
and sentiment of the address. As in former cases, we pro- 
nounce the attraction of similarity powerful when it breaks 
through a great discordance, and the discordance great that 
arrests the reviving stroke of similarity ; in fact, we must 
measure each force by the opposition that it conquers. If a 
verbal likeness has the effect of interpolating some old recol- 
lection in a subject most discordant with it, we pronounce 
either the verbal action powerful, or the bent of the mind upon 
the subject feeble, or both. 

As regards the workings of similarity among the sensations 



476 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

of hearing, we have confined ourselves, in accounting for easy or 
difficult reinstatement, to the character of the ear ; we have not 
in this case brought in as a possible explanation the general 
force of similarity in the mind, that force, namely, that would 
tell equally upon all classes of sensations and thoughts, 
and make the individual good or bad on the whole in the 
matter of tracing out sameness in diversity. I am induced, 
from the facts that have come under my observation, to 
admit the existence of such a pervading characteristic of the 
brain ; and the reader will observe that it has been already 
invoked as one of the possible explanations of difference 
of character in reviving sensations of Taste and Smell ; but in 
the special case of the ear, I am strongly impressed with the 
view that the nature of the organ itself has much more to do 
with our powers of acute hearing and the acquisitions con- 
nected therewith, than the pervading characters of the brain 
or mind in general. As regards music, I think this view very 
strongly supported by facts ; as regards articulation, it probably 
holds to a less degree. 

21. Among Sensations of Sight, the occasions for identify- 
ing sameness in diversity are innumerable. We can identify 
colours in spite of difference of shade ; thus we have a whole 
class of blues, of reds, of yellows. The existence of such 
classes implies both sameness and difference ; the class name 
being derived from the sameness or the effect common to all 
the individuals. When a colour is intermediate between two 
principal colours, as between yellow and red, we may fail to 
class it with either, not being struck with any feeling of 
identity in the case ; whereupon we constitute a new colour, 
as orange. It may also happen that to one mind the colour 
may appear as red, and to another yellow, according to 
the previous impression that it most readily revives. The 
peculiar effect induced when colour shines through a trans- 
parent surface may be quoted to exemplify the operation 
of similarity in vision ; for we do not readily identify 
this effect in all colours and in all varieties of the transparent 
covering ; that is to say, such is the diversity, that the percep- 
tion of sameness is attended with difficulty, and reveals itself 



GENERALIZATION OF COLOURS AND LUSTRE. 477 

to some minds and not to all A varnished substance, a 
glossy fabric, a polisbed surface in metal or stone, a film of 
wet, a clear brook, a covering of glass, all strike the mind with 
a common effect of brilliancy, and if the power of similarity is 
in effective operation, each one of these effects may recal a 
great many of the others, so as to muster in the present view 
a whole class of things very different in general appearance, 
but all agreeing in a particular impression. According to the 
reach of mind possessed by the individual, that is, according 
to the vigour of the identifying stroke, will be the range 
of objects brought up from the past at the instance of 
some one present. Looking at a brilliantly polished marble 
chimney-piece, one man may be reminded only of polished 
stones of various kinds ; another, breaking through a greater 
shroud of diversity, compares the effect with metallic polish. 
Speculating still more deeply on the kind of influence exerted 
on the mind by such effects, a third person brings up a 
still more remote subject, varnished surfaces ; from these he 
may proceed to glossy silks and polished leather ; and 
by a stretch still more remote, one may bring the effect 
of a pebbly bottom through a clear running rivulet into 
the comparison. But in order to carry an identity so far as 
would be implied in this series of objects, it would be neces- 
sary that we should have not merely a keen feeling of 
the common effect of lustrous brilliancy, but also a notion of 
its depending on a transparent covering over a mass of colour. 
This notion, added to the feeling of effect, might enable us 
without a great stretch of mind to break through the enormous 
difference between a marble chimney-piece and a pool of water; 
whereas the feeling of effect, if alone able for such a stroke 
of identity, would show itself to be intensely acute, or the 
general force of similarity would need to be very powerful. The 
case would then be more of the nature of a poetic fetch, a 
Shakesperian instance ; two objects totally diverse in their 
appearance to the common eye recalling one another through 
the medium of a common emotion. On the other hand, the 
case of identifying the series through the idea that the trans- 
parent surface overlying the colour was the main circumstance 



478 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

of the brilliancy, would be an example of a more intellectual 
kind of identification, such as a scientific mind is accustomed to 
bring about. 

In the combinations of colour with form and size, — the 
optical with the muscular impressions of sight, — we have the 
widest possible scope for tracing likeness amidst diversity. 
We identify a common colour through all varieties of objects, 
large, small, round, square, straight, crooked, here and there 
and everywhere. Thus it is that we have in our minds a 
class notion for every colour, a common impression of white, 
red, and blue, derived from every imaginable species of 
objects. The more susceptible we are to colour, the more deep 
and permanent and various are these common impressions, 
and the more easily do we identify a new case with the total 
of the previous instances' of the same colour, — of green, violet, 
purple, claret, &c. ; and the less liable are we to be put out 
by diversifying circumstances, as by differences of shade, of 
richness, the addition of lustre, the presence of other colours, 
the total difference in the material, shape, and size of the 
objects. When one's hold of colour is but feeble, one is very 
readily confused by all these circumstances of variety; the 
sense of difference between scarlets, crimsons, and purples, 
becomes practically obliterated ; in the language of our general 
doctrine, a scarlet does not revive the previous impressions of 
scarlet, so as to retain them firmly and interpret the new 
case by their means, thereby settling the identity between it 
and them. 

The identification and generalization of forms in the 
midst of every possible difference in colour and dimensions, 
opens up another field of illustration. We identify the cir- 
cular outline of round bodies; the oval shape of others; there 
is an infinity of classes determined by form, including not 
merely the regular figures of Geometry, but all the recurring 
shapes in nature and art — egg-shaped, heart-shaped, pear- 
shaped, vase-shaped, cup-shaped, lanceolate, &c. &c. These 
comparisons arise out of identity in the attribute of form, seen 
through diversity in all other respects. Most of the identifi- 
cations are sufficiently easy to strike any observer; while 



IDENTIFICATION OF VISIBLE FORMS 479 

instances occasionally arise where only a limited number of 
minds are struck with the likeness, or experience the revival 
of the old upon the new. Thus, in the descriptions of botany, 
the shapes of leaf and flower are often represented by com- 
parisons that are far from obvious to an ordinary observer. 
In anatomical descriptions there is not unfrequently an 
analogous want of obvious resemblance. 

The case of mathematical forms and artificial diagrams is 
both peculiar and interesting; but the important strokes of 
likeness in diversity that occur in science are rather more 
complicated than the examples falling properly under our 
present head. The generalization of the forms themselves — ■ 
of triangle, square, parallelogram, ellipse, &c. — through all 
possible differences of subject, is all that we can quote on the 
subject of tracing similarity among our sensations of sight. 
And we may remark here, as on a former occasion, that a 
strong sensitiveness to the other properties of things, that is, 
to their colours, dimensions, material, uses, influences on the 
feelings, &c, is an obstruction to the process of identifying 
the mathematical form. A burning volcano suggests com- 
parisons not with the diagrams of the cone in a book of 
Geometry, but with images of conflagration and explosive 
energy. 

Of forms not mathematical we have the alphabetical and 
other artificial signs and symbols, used both in business opera- 
tions and in science. In deciphering bad hand-writing there 
is scope for identifying sameness in diversity. This is like 
the case of obscure articulation discussed under hearing. A 
strong sense of the points that make the characteristic dif- 
ference of each letter, and an obtuseness to all the unmeaning 1 
flourishes, are the qualities of a good deciphering head. In 
proportion as a reader is carried away by ornamental shapes, 
his power of making out the meaning is impaired. This is 
the exact parallel of what was said above respecting the effects 
of over-sensibility to oratorical cadence. 

The important case of the revival of language, already 
brought in under both articulate action and the sense of hearing, 
comes in here also, inasmuch as written language appeals to the 



480 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

eye, and is made coherent in the mind in the shape of im- 
pressions of sight. What was said above on the resuscitation 
of past addresses and sayings, through listening to some one 
speaking, applies to the reader of books. Forms of language 
and phrases affecting the eye, recal their similars from the 
past, and break through a greater or less amount of unlike- 
ness, so as to make present at the same time matters written 
in different places and occasions. An eye very much arrested 
and impressed with language is to that degree prone to such 
revivals ; but according as the written symbols are regarded 
purely as a medium for conveying pictures or information, the 
tendency to mere symbolical identification is restrained. We 
have here, as before, occasion to note the verbal aptitude of 
the mind in contrast to the hold taken of the things that 
make the subject matter of language, whatever those may 
happen to be, — whether science, history, poetry, business 
transactions, or any other. In the verbal mind we can remark 
the following peculiarities, — ist. The physical power of arti- 
culation well developed; this is shown in the easy acquire- 
ment of all the positions of the voice and mouth requisite for 
speech. 2nd. The contiguous adhesiveness of trains of arti- 
culate actions, or of the letters, syllables, and words that 
make up the stream of utterance. 3rd. A good articulate 
ear, both as respects discrimination and cohesiveness of im- 
pressions. 4th. A corresponding eye for alphabetical or written 
composition. 5th. A certain pleasure or enjoyment in the 
exertions of speaking, hearing, and reading, apart from the 
further ends served by these; this circumstance inspires and 
sustains the exercise of those lingual functions. 6th. The 
restoring power of similarity for verbal states in the articulate 
organs, ear and eye respectively, should be vigorous, either in 
consequence of this force being largely developed over all 
kinds of material, or from the special susceptibility in those 
speech-embodying parts of the system. To these six positive 
peculiarities may be added a negative aid, namely, com- 
parative indifference or insensibility to subject matter. This 
is the only thing wanted to enable the faculty of language to 



INFLUENCE OF DIVEKSITY. 481 

run riot, as we occasionally find it in our experience of men 
and women. 

Artistic forms make a class distinct from both the mathe- 
matical and the symbolical. In them the identity is partly 
in the literal outline, as traced upon the eye, and partly in 
the effect of it on the mind, as an object of beauty or grace. 
This last requisite, being the essential feature, must rule the 
mind in recalling the various examples of some effect present 
to the eye. Thus, in the drapery of a statue, we identify 
some effect that we have formerly been impressed with, and 
the stroke of similarity brings up the former objects to the 
recollection, on which we find that there is by no means a 
literal coincidence of lines, and curves, and folds; but the 
aesthetic similarity has broken through these and other dif- 
ferences, and brought before the mind an instructive array of 
artistic parallels. A deep feeling of literal or mathematical 
form would be repugnant to an identification of this kind, 
unless we had the power of entirely sinking the one suscep- 
tibility in the presence of the other; for this is the only 
means of maintaining such contradictory tastes in the same 
mind. 

The identification of one scene of nature with another 
may present all degrees of difficulty, according to the predo- 
minance of agreement or of difference, and according to the 
tendency of the mind to be impressed with the one or the 
other. If the sameness is in form and outline, in the arrange- 
ment of mountain, valley, and river, the reviving stroke of 
similarity turns on the attraction of the mind for unsymmetrical 
shapes and groupings, one of the features of the catholic sus- 
ceptibility of the naturalist's mind. If the resemblance to 
certain other scenes lies in richness, massiveness of colouring, 
and strength of contrasts, the chord to be struck is of a dif- 
ferent kind, and such scenes will be revived in a mind alive 
to these effects, notwithstanding perhaps very great dif- 
ferences in the groupings or formal arrangements of the 
component parts. 

The same observations are applicable to any other mixed 

I I 



482 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

objects of sight or spectacle. When one dress or uniform 
recals others ; when the mise en seine of a dramatic repre- 
sentation suggests parallels from our former experience in 
those things; when one face recals another by similarity : or 
even when a picture revives the original ; — in all such cases, 
the interest, in a scientific point of view, lies in remarking 
what is the nature of the agreeing particulars, and what are 
the points of discord. These will determine the sort of mind 
that would experience the stroke of recal, and the facilities 
and difficulties belonging to the case for each different variety 
of mental constitution. 

The general power of Similarity would operate alike on 
all kinds of forms and on all varieties of objects, reviving 
with equal readiness the similar in colour and in shape. But 
this general power is always modified by the acuteness of the 
sense, as well as by special education, which deepens the 
hold that we have of some one class of impressions, and 
makes us all the more ready to fall into that particular net. 
Hence it never happens that any individual is equally prone 
to restore likeness in colour, in geometrical form, in cypher 
and symbol, and in aesthetic effect. 

The last class of objects coming under sensations of Light 
are Visible Movements. These are of the greatest possible 
variety. Among those that agree in some point or other, 
classes are formed, and names given indicating the agreement. 
For example, the class of projectiles agree in the form of the 
curve that they take ; in like manner, we have circular move- 
ments, elliptic movements as in the planets, rectilineal move- 
ments, uniform movements, accelerated movements, rotation on 
an axle, pendulums, waves, zig-zag movements, waterfalls, explo- 
sions, &c. Under all these we may have any amount of diversity 
in the range and speed, as well as in the thing moved. The 
movements of animals originate many other varieties ; we have 
all the varieties of movement on all-fours, the walk, trot, 
canter, gallop, shamble, &c. ; the flight of birds, besides having 
a common character, is marked by great diversity in the 
different species ; the darting to and fro of the bat, the frog- 
leap, the crawl of creeping things, the sluggish pace of the 



VISIBLE MOVEMENTS. 483 

snail, the dartings of the infusoria, are all distinct types of 
moving spectacle. By identifications through the stroke of 
similarity we bring together into classes a great many instances 
isolated in their occurrence, and keep hold of them by class 
names. We thus generalize the grand varieties of swimming, 
flying, two-footed locomotion, &c. ; and within each of these 
we have a number of minor classes formed in still closer like- 
nesses. In the flexible and various action of a human being 
we have many characteristic types of movement and display. 
The gait in walking, the action in speaking, the mode of per- 
forming any work or operation, the movements of the stage, 
are so many objects that excite our notice and sink into our 
minds as permanent recollections. The collective movements 
of multitudes either in orderly array and disciplined precision^ 
or in inorganic tumult and confusion, impress themselves upon 
the view, and spring up as memories in after times. The 
moving life over the face of the globe and in the habitations 
of men is more interesting to us than the still life ; it contains 
more matter of emotion and excitement, and is consequently 
more dwelt upon both in present reality and in idea. 

Here, therefore, the force of similarity has a wide arena to 
act in. The recurrence of sameness in the midst of more or 
less diversity in all these various movements leads to identifi- 
cation more or less easy. We identify a style of acting on 
the stage, a dance, a gait, although the circumstances of the 
present are very different from the examples lying in the 
memory. If the agreement is not literal, but in a certain 
general spirit and effect, a strong sense of the literal will be a 
bar to the revival of the resembling cases in the past. If we 
are very sensitive to the stirring effects of movement in general, 
we are not so likely to identify special curves and patterns as 
being similar to others previously known. Easy inflammation 
to a striking effect blinds us to the accompanying details, ac- 
cording to a principle already adverted to. Movements may be 
divided and classed in a manner exactly parallel to the three- 
fold division of forms ; mathematical or regular movements, 
as rectilinear, circular, elliptical, &c, comprising all the con- 
tinuous movements of machinery, and all movements that can 

II 2 



484 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

be numerically calculated or geometrically traced ; symbolical 
movements, or all those used as arbitrary signs, such as the 
gesticulation accompanying directions, commands, instruction, 
and the like, telegraphic signals, the alphabet of the deaf and 
dumb, the characteristic gait and movements whereby we 
discriminate persons and animals ; lastly, aesthetic movements, 
or all those that touch the sense of beauty and the interesting 
emotions. Different minds are variously susceptible to these 
three kinds, and identify one sort by preference over the others^ 
The aesthetic sense leads to a revival on that point of resem- 
blance, and obstructs the disposition to classify movements 
according to their mathematical character or arbitrary mean- 
ing. The most literal and disinterested susceptibility is to the 
arbitrary, where neither calculable regularity nor artistic 
beauty imparts any attractions. The signals of a telegraph, 
the motions of a fugleman, the signs used in converse with the 
deaf, are like cyphers and alphabetic letters; they give scope 
for pure intellectual identity and discrimination; they require 
to be closely observed and literally compared with those pre- 
viously known ; the differences are arbitrary and so are the 
agreements. A cold intellect, with good adhesion and good 
reinstatement for numerous uninteresting and conventional 
movements, is the basis of their easy recognition. This would 
pretty accurately describe the business mind. 

22. A somewhat interesting class of identities is that pre- 
sented by the properties common to Sensations of different 
senses. Impressions reaching the mind through different 
avenues of sense are yet found to have a sameness in the 
mental feeling or the emotion, this sameness being necessarily 
accompanied with the difference due to the diverse entries 
whereby they reach the brain. For example, many tastes and 
smells have the character that we call sweet ; but there are 
also effects on the ear and on the eye with so much of the same 
character that we apply to them the same epithet. In like 
manner, the character of 'pungency' is common to sensations 
of all the senses; we have it under taste, in peppered meats; 
in smell, we have sal volatile ; in touch, a scalding warmth ; in 
hearing, drum and fife music ; in sight, intense illumination. 



EFFECTS COMMON TO THE DIFFERENT SENSES. 485 

The amount of sameness in these various sensations is such as 
often to cause one to recal the others, especially when we are 
anxious to make known the effect of some one of them upon our 
minds. The identity has been long since made out in many 
such classes, and once struck is clenched and handed down by 
the use of a common term, as in the above case of 'sweetness/ 
The opposite quality, 'bitter/ originally referring to taste, has 
been recognised as occurring in various emotions, as when we 
speak of the bitterness of disappointment or remorse. The 
quality that we call ' delicate ' has original reference to Touch, 
but by the feeling of sameness it is looked upon as a mode of 
sensation in all the other senses. Comparisons are instituted 
between sights and sounds, and the phraseology of the two 
arts of music and painting is in this way made interchangeable. 
A picture is said to have a certain tone ; and a piece of music 
is by a less common figure spoken of as richly coloured. The 
feeling of ' warmth ' is identified as belonging to effects that 
have no connexion with heat ; we hear of warm colours, and 
warm affections. Notwithstanding the great disparity there 
is between an actual sensation of heat, and a colour or a 
natural affection, there is a degree of sameness sufficient to 
break through the discordance in other respects, and bring on 
the stroke of identification. The designation of one class of 
sensations as pains and of another as pleasures is also an 
identifying of a common character in the midst of great 
diversity; but these qualities are usually so well marked in 
the mind, being, in fact, the prime movers of our actions, that 
no amount of diversity can prevent us from recognising either 
the one or the other; indeed a pain not identified as such, 
that is, not recalling our general notion of pain gathered from 
the sum of all our painful experiences, would really be no 
pain. 

These generalizations among the feelings of our different 
senses serve interesting uses. They teach us the existence of 
common mental effects arising out of very different outward 
causes, and are in fact so many discoveries regarding our 
mental nature. They also serve as illustrations the one of the 
other, in our descriptions of feelings, whether in the common 



486 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

conversation of society, in the higher sphere of poetic delinea- 
tion, or for the purposes of science, as in the delineations of 
the Senses attempted to be given in this work. If we are 
endeavouring to convey to others some state of feeling that 
they have not experienced, we must endeavour to bring before 
their view some identical or parallel state that they have 
experienced, and therefore we require to possess through 
the identifying action of similarity, a store of such likenesses. 
This is one of the most frequently recurring attempts of 
poetry, one of whose objects is to produce new emotions in the 
minds of men. The illustration of the feeling roused in the 
mind of Antonio by music brings in a complicated reference 

to the other senses. 

Oh, it came over me 
Like tlie sweet south upon a bauk of violets, 
Stealing and giving odour. 

CONTIGUOUS AGGREGATES. — CONJUNCTIONS. 

23. Under Contiguity we had to notice the aggregation 
of impressions derived from many different sources, through 
the circumstance of their proximity or their striking the mind 
at the same time. We pointed to the association of feelings of 
movement and sensations with one another in the notions 
that external objects create within us, as in the complex idea 
of an apple, or a piece of gold. We remarked further that in 
many objects the mental impression overflowed or surpassed 
the sensible impression, as in the whole class of tools, with 
which are associated uses, that is, actions and reactions upon 
other bodies. In the more profound knowledge of natural 
things that experimental science yields us, there is a similar 
addition of associated impressions to the actual feelings of the 
senses ; the chemical notion we have of sulphur, for example, 
is a complication of this kind. 

Now wherever there is much variety or complicacy in the 
impressions of outward things, there is scope for the detection 
of likenesses in the midst of diversity. An object acts upon 
four different senses ; the effect on one sense is identical with 
an effect formerly felt, but the collateral effects on the three 



CLASSIFICATIONS OF NATUEAL OBJECTS. 487 

other senses are totally different from the collaterals in the 
other case. Thus I take in my hand a ball of glass ; to the 
touch it is the same as a ball of polished marble, and might 
recal the remembrance of such a ball if I had chanced to have 
been previously cognizant of one ; but looking at it, hearing 
the ring that it makes on being struck, the disparity is notable 
in both points, and would probably prevent my getting upon 
the old track of the marble specimen. The most impressive 
feature of the object being its brilliant effect on the eye, this 
would have every chance to rule the identifying operation, 
and prevent me from recalling an object entirely destitute of 
this peculiarity. There might, however, be circumstances that 
carried my attention off from this effect, in which case the 
round smooth touch might start forth to the dignity of striking 
the recal. 

In the popular classifications made among familiar objects, 
the identifying process is seen habitually at work. On the 
landscape we observe an elevation of the ground, an ascent 
from the ordinary level to a high point or peak ; we note this 
appearance repeated under a great variety of shapes and in 
different situations ; we are not prevented by the disparity 
from feeling the sameness, and the sight of every new indi- 
vidual recals to the view those that we have formerly seen. 
We retain in our minds one vast array of objects widely 
scattered in nature ; we give them a common name, we pre- 
dicate of each new example the peculiarities that we have 
found attaching to the previous ones ; we know without a 
trial that if we were to ascend any one of them we should 
experience a wide prospect, a diminishing temperature, and 
an altered vegetation. We thus group in the mind a number 
of things not grouped in nature ; we also assemble together 
into one recollection many widely scattered periods of our 
past history, being the epochs when we encountered all the 
different mountains and mountain ranges that make up our 
catalogue ; and lastly, we accumulate a body of information 
that enables us to infer beforehand or divine the characters 
that we should find on a close inspection to belong to every 
new-discovered member of the class. 



488 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

In the same way, and with similar consequences, do we 
classify numerous other groups of natural objects ; — rivers, 
forests, cultivated fields, lakes, seas, cities, quadrupeds, birds, 
fishes, &c. Natural History makes a more express business of 
the classifying operation ; it searches all creation in order to 
exhaust the materials and forms that it contains, and takes 
precautions to arrive at real and fundamental identities. The 
progress of Natural History knowledge has been partly in the 
increase of objects discovered, and partly in the transition 
from superficial to deep identities. In the time of Aristotle 
animals were classified according to the element they inha- 
bited ; one class dwelling on the land, another on the sea, a 
third in the air : this point of identity being so prominent 
and forcible that it arrested every one's attention. Each of 
these classes could be subdivided by forming minor groups on 
still closer resemblances ; thus we should have on the earth, 
bipeds, quadrupeds, reptiles, &c, each of these groups being 
the assemblage of a number of individuals recalled to the 
view by special identities. So in the air, the insect multitude 
would be readily marked off from the feathered tribes. It 
was not difficult for observing men to draw together classes 
such as these. But a more profound examination has deve- 
loped features of identification that carry with them a greater 
amount of agreement, and on points of more value as know- 
ledge, than in those ancient groupings. Birds are now iden- 
tified not by the circumstance of their flying in the air, but 
on the fact of their bringing forth their young in the egg, 
by their feathered structure, their warm-blooded circulation, 
&c. Instead of the old group of quadrupeds or animals 
walking on all fours, we have the class mammalia (which 
suckle their young), including both man and quadrupeds, and 
certain animals of the sea and the air ; this class therefore 
goes completely athwart the classification according to the 
element the creature lives in. 

24. The operation of Similarity in such classify ings and 
re-classifyings as the above, has a very high interest ; it sets 
forth the workings of genius, and the history of science and 
of the human mind. The reader has not as yet been quite 



OBJECTS IMPRESSING A PLURALITY OF SENSES. 489 

prepared for carrying a full explanation over this field of 
intellectual labour. It is necessary first to dwell for some 
little time upon less complicated instances. I might follow 
the order adopted in developing the Law of Contiguity, and 
specify instances of the aggregation of impressions of the 
various senses, the Organic sensibility with Taste, Smell, Touch, 
Hearing, or Sight ; and it would be easy to lay hold of many 
cases of identity in diversity among such aggregates. Things 
affecting the palate alike may yet be very different to the 
touch and sight, as in the different varieties of the same 
alimentary substances, — bread, butter, flesh, &c. Objects that 
are identical to the eye may yet be utterly different to the 
taste and smell, as in the case of transparent liquids, such as 
water, alcohol, nitric acid, and many others. We here make 
a class founded on the common peculiarities, and give a 
designation implying these and no more. If, however, the 
taste or smell is the point we are bent on studying, we do not 
pass from nitric acid to alcohol and water, but to other sub- 
stances that we have known with analogous actions on the 
nose, as the other strong acids and the biting gases ; these are 
recalled to mind in spite of differences in all the other sensible 
properties distinguishing one kind of matter from another. 
In such cases, it is to be noted that the diversity is often but 
very slightly obstructive of the process of reviving the parallel 
instances, and for this reason, that the mind may be entirely 
engrossed with the one property, and inattentive to all the 
others ; the acid and biting odour may be the one property of 
nitric acid that occupies the regards, and the substance is to 
all intents and purposes a substance known by one sense, and 
recalling former substances identical in their action upon that 
one sense. This remark is often applicable in the workings 
of Similarity. Things may have a multiple action on the 
senses, but if the currents of mental occupation are exclusively 
occupied with one of the effects, the others are for the time 
being as good as null ; they neither aid nor obstruct the 
operations of the intellect stimulated by the one effect of taste, 
or sound, or sight that is the engrossing influence at the 
moment. We have had occasion previously to notice the 



490 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

circumstance that a diverse feature is obstructive of the re- 
viving tendency of an agreeing feature, in proportion as it has 
power to seize and occupy the mind ; as when great difference 
in artistic effect prevents an artist from identifying objects 
that have a likeness in their material or in mathematical 
form, — a burning volcano with a truncated cone in Geometry. 
The observation is an extremely general one ; for when by 
obtuseness of sense or voluntary power of resistance, we shut 
our attention to a circumstance of disparity, it ceases to count 
as an obstruction to the effect of similarity in other particulars. 
The overwhelming attractions of the agreeing feature will 
often of themselves suffice to reduce disagreement to a nullity, 
even supposing that there is no natural obtuseness, and no 
effort of volition to withdraw attention from the disagreeing 
circumstances. Absorbed in listening to a full band, our intel- 
lectual trains of identity and comparison turn upon airs, 
melodies, and harmonies, and not upon the persons, instru- 
ments, and incidentals of the performance. 

25. I shall not pursue farther the instances of aggregate 
impressions on plurality of senses. Passing on one stage 
farther, we will now advert to objects viewed as compounds of 
sense and association. Tools, implements, machinery, and all 
objects of practical utility, make a class that may stand first 
in exemplifying this aggregation. A kuife, for example, is 
not simply an object of the senses ; it is this and something 
more. Along with the sensation that it produces in the 
touch and the sight, there is an associated impression of its 
use or of the cutting operation : and we are almost unable to 
regard it apart from this other circumstance. The appear- 
ance of a knife lying on the table is not the whole knife, the 
appearance of it in the hand while we feel its form and 
dimensions, coupling sight and touch, is not the whole knife ; 
they are at best but signs or suggestive particulars that revive 
in the mind by association the full notion of the object. 
Here, therefore, we have a complication of sense and intellect, 
of impressions made by an actual object, with ideal or asso- 
ciated impressions arising from former occasions when we have 
seen it in its full operation. In this association of sensible 



OBJECTS IDENTIFIED FROM THEIR USES. 491 

appearance with use, — the last being only occasionally seen 
in the reality, and therefore for the most part an idea or a 
potentiality, — we have abundant room for the exercise of 
tracing likeness yoked with unlikeness. We may have simi- 
larity in form with diversity of use, and similarity of use with 
diversity of form. A rope suggests other ropes and cords, if 
we look to the appearance ; but looking to the use, it may 
suggest an iron cable, a wooden prop, an iron girding, a leather 
band, or bevelled gear. In spite of diversity of appearance? 
we are led to bring up what answers a common end. If we 
are very much attracted by sensible appearances, there will be 
the more difficulty in recalling things that agree only in the 
use ; if on the other hand we are profoundly sensitive to the 
one point of practical efficiency as a tool, the peculiarities not 
essential to this w T ill be little noticed, and we shall be ever 
ready to revive past objects corresponding in use to some one 
present, although never so diverse in all other circumstances. 
"We become oblivious to the difference between a horse, a 
steam-engine, and a waterfall, when our minds are engrossed 
with the one circumstance of moving power. The diversity 
in these had no doubt for a long time the effect of keeping 
down their first identification ; and in many classes of minds 
this identification would have been for ever impossible. The 
regarding of these three things as one and alike implies a 
remarkable sense of sameness in diversity: the attractive force 
of similarity behoves to be very energetic, and the aiding 
circumstances must likewise be very efficient. A strong con- 
centration of mind upon the single peculiarity of mechanical 
force, and a degree of indifference to the general aspect of the 
things themselves, must conspire with the intellectual energy 
of resuscitation by similars, in order to summon together in 
the view three structures so different. We can see by an 
instance like this how new adaptations of existing machinery 
might arise in the mind of a mechanical inventor. All new 
identifications lead to the multiplication of things serving a 
common end. When it first occurred to a reflecting mind 
that moving water had a property identical with human or 
brute force, namely, the property of setting other masses in 



492 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

motion, overcoming inertia and resistance, — when the sight 
of the stream suggested through this point of likeness the 
power of the animal, — a new addition was made to the class 
of prime movers, and when circumstances permitted, this 
power would be put to use instead of the others. Here would 
be in fact a discovery of a new property of water, and a new 
invention in the mechanical arts. It may seem to the modern 
understanding, familiar with water wheels and drifting rafts, 
that the similarity here was an extremely obvious one. But 
if we could put ourselves back into an early state of mind, 
when running water affected the mind by its brilliancy, its 
roar, and irregular devastation, we might perhaps feel that to 
identify this with a man's muscular energy for practical pur- 
poses, was by no means an obvious effect. Doubtless when a 
mind arose, insensible by natural constitution to the poetic 
aspects of things, and devoted to the working out of practical 
ends, having withal a great stretch of identifying intellect, 
such a comparison would readily take place ; and I am dis- 
posed to attribute to great discoverers generally the concur- 
rence of all these three circumstances, — strong attraction for 
the properties whereon the identification is to turn, compara- 
tive indifference to the discrepant accompaniments, and good 
reach of mind in general. We may pursue the same example 
one stage further, and come to the discovery of steam power, 
or the identification of expanding vapour with the previously 
known sources of mechanical force. To the common eye, for 
ages, the vapour presented itself as clouds in the sky, as a 
hissing noise at the spout of a kettle, with the formation of a 
foggy curling vapour at a few inches' distance. The forcing 
up of the lid of the kettle may also have been occasionally 
observed. But how long was it ere any one had suggested to 
their mind the parallelism of this appearance with a blast of 
wind, a rush of water, or an exertion of animal muscle ? 
The discordance was too great to be broken through by such 
a faint and limited amount of likeness. In one mind, how- 
ever, the identification did take place, and was followed out 
into all its consequences. The likeness had occurred to other 
minds previously, but not with the same results. These minds 



PKACTICAL GENIUS. 493 

must have been in some way or other distinguished from the 
millions of mankind, and the above is the explanation of this 
difference that I should be disposed to assign, as deduced 
from the theory of the human intellect adopted in the present 
exposition. The intellectual character of Watt is well known 
to us ; and we can have no hesitation in attributing to him a 
very great suscej3tibility to the mechanical properties of bodies, 
or the uses of things as tools and machinery, and a concentra- 
tion of mind upon this one feature, which would be a practical 
indifference to all other aspects, together with great reach of 
the identifying intellect : and I may add, what would be 
almost implied in these three characteristics, a previous know- 
ledge of the matters likely to rise up to the view under the 
identifying impulse ; for the previous storing of the mind 
must necessarily determine what things will be recalled 
by the promptings of things present. He that had best 
studied the existing prime movers would be the person to 
detect a new one ; a far less salient manifestation of the 
property would awaken in his mind the notion of the others, 
and lead to the enrolling of the new object in their company. 
But I am nevertheless persuaded that equal acquaintance 
with the known does not make an equal power of forcing a 
way into the unknown by means of the attraction of like for 
like through an interval of separation and a repulsion of 
unlikeness. It is always difficult to assign the proportions 
due to different causes in such a recondite region of nature as 
the one we are now labouring to elucidate ; but the recorded 
instances of extraordinary genius put out of the question 
the sufficiency of any explanation limited to the amount 
of study or attention bestowed on the subject matter of the 
discoveries. 

26. The foregoing will suffice as an example of the work- 
ings of our present law in one very wide region of objects. 
We might under this head have gone a great way into the 
illustration of practical genius in all departments of life, from 
mechanical industry up to those high walks of action where 
human beings are the tools, as in military and civic command. 
But I defer for the present any remarks on these departments. 



494 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

Let us next view natural objects, as seen by the eye of the 
naturalist with a view to catalogue and exhaust all their 
properties and relations, whether practical or otherwise. The 
mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms, as objects of intel- 
lectual curiosity and rational explanation, present in each of 
their individual specimens that mixture of the sensible present 
with the associated absent above exemplified in the class of 
tools or machinery. Each mineral, plant, or animal, is a 
bundle of impressions, of which the whole cannot be made 
present to the sense at one time, there being a series of 
actions upon other individuals to be included in the con- 
ception, and these usually held together with the assistance of 
language. The complication thus presented is a degree be- 
yond the preceding group. In the class of Mineral bodies for 
example, we have the concurrence of many attributes in each 
individual, some sensible, others experimental; and it is under 
the estranging influence of much diversity that all the classes 
have been formed. Thus, to take the group of metals. Some 
of these have a very large extent of sameness, as tin, zinc, 
silver, and lead ; gold and copper are not very different to the 
common eye. Iron and manganese show a very close resem- 
blance. But when we come to mercury, a striking point of 
diversity starts forth ; the property of liquidity marks even a 
contrast with every one of the others. The influence of this 
diversity, leading the mind away to water and liquids of every 
kind, would prevent the rise of metals to the view, but for the 
strong effect of the two qualities of lustre and weight or 
specific gravity, which acting by themselves could suggest by 
similarity only such substances as silver, lead, tin, &c. This 
concurrence of two striking points of sameness overpowers the 
diverting influence of the liquid state, and brings mercury to 
the mind's eye side by side with the metals. But these bodies 
have been identified with others in the midst of still greater 
discordance. When Sir Humphrey Davy suggested that 
metallic substances were locked up in soda, potash, and lime, 
the identification in his mind proceeded upon resemblances 
purely intellectual, that is to say, having no direct appearance 
to the senses, but made out through indirect means, and repre- 






IDENTIFICATIONS IN CHEMICAL PEOPEETIES. 495 

sented to the mind by technical symbols. He found a class 
of bodies that had a close agreement with one another, and 
were termed salts ; he saw that some of these consisted of an 
acid and the oxide of a metal, as sulphate of iron, nitrate of 
silver ; others consisted of an acid and a substance called an 
alkali, as sulphate of soda, nitrate of potash. Here there 
were a number of bodies brought together in the mind by 
general agreement ; an oxide of a metal in these bodies sug- 
gested by similarity of function an alkaline substance, both 
having the property of neutralizing an acid and forming a 
salt ; it was impossible therefore not to class together in one 
group all substances having this property, which was done 
before the time of Davy, under the name bases. He by a bold 
venture asserted that this common property of neutralizing 
acids and making salts grows out of a still closer identity of 
character, namely, a common composition ; that is to say, that 
the alkalies were oxides of metals too, and that therefore all 
the bases contained a metal and oxygen. On putting the 
suggestion to the proof it was found to hold good ; lustrous 
metallic substances were actually separated from soda, potash, 
&c, and the identity made good to the sense as well as to the 
reason. But to trace identities of this nature a highly intel- 
lectual medium of conception is necessary; salts had to be 
considered, not as appealing to the touch, taste, and sight, but 
as compounded of ingredients represented to the mind by 
names, figures, and symbols. Had copperas been known only 
as it appears in a drysalter's store, no such identifications 
could have grown out of its comparison with other salts. It 
behoved to be known as sulphuric acid combined with oxide 
of iron, or symbolically as S O 3 + Fe O, in order to see an 
analogy between it and Glauber's salts, similarly represented, 
S O 3 + Soda. The scientific identities proceed on scientific 
conceptions, that is to say, on artificial ways of expressing by 
names, numbers, and symbols, the facts that experiment brings 
to light. The same train of proceeding led to an identifica- 
tion that would have been utterly impossible to the common 
eye, namely, hydrogen gas with the metals, — a gas with a 
solid, — the lightest substance in nature with the heaviest. 



496 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

For hydrogen occurs in connexions that inevitably suggest a 
metal by the force of similarity, as by its combining with 
oxygen, and entering into still higher compounds exactly as 
the metals do. The repugnance of the physical or more sen- 
sible properties of hydrogen (gaseous form and lightness) to 
the properties of the metals kept back for a time, but did not 
in the end prevent, an identification on the property of com- 
bining chemically in the same manner as these. And in the 
artificial representations of chemical formulae the identity is 
such as to strike the eye at once, although this representation 
was consequent on the recognition of similarity of function in 
the two cases. An acid is now represented chemically in the 
same form as a salt, hydrogen standing in the acid for the 
metal in the salt. Sulphuric acid is H O, S O 3 , the sulphate 
of iron Fe 0, S O 3 . 

27. To pass from the mineral world to the vegetable. 
Plants may be identified on many different points, and the 
same plant fall into many groups of associates according to the 
feature that predominates in the mind, and strikes the stroke 
of recal. What in the end has turned out a most valuable 
classification, was repelled at the outset by obtrusive dissimi- 
larities. In the first classifications of plants, the trees of the 
forest would be grouped together, owing to their easy identifi- 
cation through their prominent and imposing points of like- 
ness. The shrubs would make another class identified by the 
same superficial likeness. The apparently insignificant and 
artificial identification of Linnaeus would be repulsive to a 
common eye, and could only result from minute dissection of 
the structure, which brought out features of identity hidden in 
the heart of the efflorescence. The Linnaean classification was 
properly a fetch of identity in the midst of the widest discord- 
ance ; and the mental preparation for gaining this triumph of 
identification in the midst of difficulties was a shutting of the 
eye to the bold features that held all other minds captive, and 
a devoted study of the minute and concealed structure. The 
identifying reach of similarity in such a mind must have been 
of a high order to produce so great a change in the mode of 
looking at the whole vegetable world, to break down all the 



THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 497 

old classifications, and compel the adoption of others entirely 
at variance with them. 

The vegetable world presents us with another example of 
the attraction of Similarity in a very pure form. The analogy 
of the flower to the whole plant first struck the mind of the 
poet Goethe, and was considered by botanists a luminous 
suggestion. He saw in the arrangement of the leaves round 
a stem the analogue of the circular arrangement of the petals 
of the flower, notwithstanding very great diversity of general 
appearance. So in the leaf, Oken identified the plant. The 
branchings of the veins of the leaf are in fact a miniature of 
the entire vegetable, with its parent stem branches and 
ramifications. In the first suggestion of these identities we 
have notable cases of the stroke of similarity through a dense 
medium of diversity. Such identifications as these (when 
proved to be genuine and not merely apparent or fanciful), 
cast new lights over a subject ; they simplify what is before 
complex, and give a clue to what seemed a labyrinth. 

28. Our next examples are from the Animal Kingdom. 
We have here cases exactly similar to the foregoing. In the 
classifications of animals we find the stroke of identity falling 
first upon one class of features, as in the divisions into quad- 
rupeds, birds, and fishes ; this is superseded by a deeper 
resemblance resting on more minute examination, whereby 
certain animals that inhabit the sea are excluded from the 
class of fishes, as the whale, seal, and porpoise, and certain 
others that fly in the air (the bats for example), are excluded 
from the class of birds. This new classification, like the reform 
of Linnseus in the Vegetable world, proceeded on an investiga- 
tion of structure, and a disregard of the startling differences 
that arrest the common eye. It was accomplished by the 
comparative anatomists of the last century, and is now fixed 
for ever in the minds of men by the language expressing the 
divisions and subdivisions of the Animal Kingdom. 

The science of Zoology furnishes likewise a number of 
interesting comparisons within the individual animal. These 
are termed homologies. The first suggestion of one of these 
homologies is attributed to the fertile analogical brain of Oken. 

K K 



498 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

Walking one day in a forest, lie came upon the bleached skull 
of a deer. He took it up, and was examining its Anatomical 
arrangement, when there flashed upon his mind an identity 
that had never struck any one. The skull he said was four 
vertebras ; in fact, the head was merely a continuation of the 
back bone, but so expanded and distorted as to throw a deep 
disguise over the fundamental sameness of structure. That 
disguise was now shot through by a powerful fetch of similarity 
in a mind prepared by previous knowledge for discovering that 
class of likenesses. Oken was evidently a man that sat loose 
to the existing identifications of things, and suffered lessobstruc- 
tion than usual from the prepossessions that these fasten on the 
mind. He had, moreover, a great natural force of the attrac- 
tive power of like for like, and could make out identities on a 
small hint. It is further apparent that he had a strong belief 
in the simplicity of nature, that is to say, in the recurrence, or 
repetition, of the same structure and the same plan of working 
in many various forms and in the most widely separated 
regions. His conviction on this point went far beyond the 
reality, as we may see from his writings ; for of the many 
hundreds of analogies that he sets forth in his one work 
' Physiophilosophy/ * there are probably not twenty that are 
sound. The intellectual force of similarity in him was under 
no check or control. He never took any steps to prove the 
reality of a supposed identification ; he left that to others. It 
so happened that in the matter of the skeleton he was right ; 
but it is only in our own day, that is half a century after the 
discovery, that the similarity of the bones of the head and the 
back is considered established.f The identifying stroke of 
similarity bringing together for the first time things that had 
previously been looked at in totally different connexions, is the 
first step in a discovery, and only the first step. It has to 
be followed up by the labour of comparing all the different 
things whose resemblance is implied in the identification, and 
it is only when this examination is complete and the result 



* Translated by the Bay Society. 

"j" See Owen on the Vertebrate Skeleton. 



SUPERFICIAL AND DEEP IDENTITIES. 499 

satisfactory that the discovery is realized. Hence the remark, 
' he discovers that proves/ Honour belongs to the first 
suggestion of a discovery, if that suggestion was the means of 
setting some one to work to verify it, but the world must ever 
look upon this last operation as the crowning exploit. 

The homologies of the skeleton imply a wide range of 
similarities hunted out through the thickest concealment of 
diversity. The identity of structure of all animals of the ver- 
tebrate class, — mammalia, birds, reptiles, and fishes ; the cor- 
respondence of the upper arm of the man, the foreleg of the 
quadruped, the wing of the bird, and the anterior fin of the fish, 
— implies a very great insight into structure, and a power of 
setting aside first appearances. The similarity of the segments 
of the same skeleton, from the crown of the head to the tip of 
the tail, constitutes the serial homology, which is the working 
out of Oken's discovery on the skull of the deer. The dis- 
covery of these homologies represents the struggles of the 
human intellect with the perplexity of the world. In the 
explanation of nature, first thoughts are scarcely ever correct. 
The superficial resemblances bring together things that have 
no deep community of structure, and hence no knowledge is 
derived from one to another. The comparison of a salmon 
with a seal can only mislead; the comparison of a seal with 
a whale may improve our knowledge of both. When a 
superficial likeness in two objects, — a sameness in some one 
prominent feature, — is the sign of a deep likeness, or a same- 
ness in many other features all of great importance, we can 
apply the whole of the knowledge we have obtained of the 
first to the second; that is, by studying one we are master of 
the two, and thus economize our labour. If I find out that a 
bat is not a bird, but one of the mammalia, I instantly 
transfer to it all that I know of the common characters of the 
mammalia : but if I identify a bat with an owl I gain nothing, 
for the likeness between the two is superficial or isolated, it 
does not imply a number of other likenesses, and the com- 
parison is therefore unprofitable. The progress of real dis- 
covery consists in seizing these pervading resemblances, and 
passing by the others. It is a singular fact that where there 

KK 2 



500 LAW OF SIMILARITY, 

is the greatest amount of real sameness, there is often the 
least apparent sameness; which doubtless only shows that the 
vulgar eye is satisfied with a very narrow and limited glance 
at things. The kindred features of a family may not be what 
gives the individual its popular interest. 

PHENOMENA OF SUCCESSION. 

29. The successions that make up the flow of changes and 
events in the world are a subject of study rising above the 
still life aggregates that we have been just considering. Even 
in those aggregates we have not absolutel}' refrained from 
implying phenomena of succession, as, for example, when we 
spoke of the experimental properties of bodies; whence it 
will be apparent that to deal with the world as we find it, 
asfgrecration and succession must both enter into our field 
of observation. 

Under Contiguity we have classified and illustrated the 
different kinds of succession prevailing around us. Some are 
Cyclic or periodic, as day and night, the seasons, the heavenly 
appearances generally; the tides, the winds, the revolution 
of machinery, the routine of life. Others are successions of 
Evolution, as in the growth of living beings, and the con- 
structions of human industry. Some are characterized by 
effect, or the production of some telling sensation, or sudden 
change, as in a blow, an explosion, a burst of music, a dra- 
matic scene. Apart from these popular and salient effects, 
we have the links of succession laid hold of in the Scientific 
view of cause and effect. Lastly, Human History at large is 
a grand ensemble of succession, which no one mind can totally 
comprehend, and which consequently presents itself in innu- 
merable aspects to the intellects of men. 

Among all these various kinds of succession, identifica- 
tions are struck through the medium of similarity. Hence 
arises classes of succession that may substitute another in 
practice, and that throw light upon one another as regards 
our knowledge. To take a familiar example from the group 
of Evolutions. Each person has a familiar knowledge of 



REAL AND ILLUSTRATIVE COMPARISONS. 501 

the growth of their own frame, and, by identifying self 
with other beings, can transfer all this knowledge to them,, 
thereby inheriting an insight far beyond the field of actual 
inspection. 

The identifications that have been traced am oner these 
innumerable varieties of sequence, and which remain held 
together, by the use of language, as the common estate of 
civilized men, have vastly enlarged the sum of human know- 
ledge and the compass of human power, besides yielding 
much refined gratification. To do them full justice, however, 
we must specify two great divisions that they fall under, 
namely, the Real and the Illustrative; the one implying an 
identity in the actual subject or intrinsic quality of the 
sequence, the other implying a sameness in some mode or 
aspect of it. Of the first class are the scientific and practical 
identities; the second are those that serve as a medium of in- 
tellectual comprehension or of artistic adornment. When we 
term certain atmospheric movements aerial tides, thereby 
identifying them with the tides of the ocean, the comparison 
is strict and scientific, for both phenomena are caused by one 
and the same natural power, namely, gravitation; but when 
we speak of ' a tide in the affairs of men/ the identity is not 
real, but merely illustrative through a certain similarity of 
phase or aspect; the ebb and flow of human prosperity has 
no dependence upon gravitation, it grows out of quite another 
class of natural impulses. Owing to the fact that the same 
effect may be produced by a plurality of causes, there are prac- 
tical identifications among forces in themselves distinct, as 
when in quarrying we substitute the expansive action of 
moisture on dry chips of wood for the explosion of gun- 
powder. The sources of power in these two effects are not 
the same ; they do not fall under a common natural cause. 
Nevertheless, this, too, would be called a real, and not an 
illustrative identity; it would be fructifera, and not lucifera, 
or poetica. 

30. The illustrative comparisons, however, are not con- 
fined to phenomena of succession ; they occur equally among 
the objects brought in under the previous head, namely, 



502 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

aggregates, conjunctions, or appearances of still life. On this 
account I prefer to treat ' illustration' as a separate subject, and 
under the present head, ' successions/ I shall merely cite a few 
examples of the identification of likenesses considered as real, 
or believed to be real. And to commence with sequences that 
are periodic or cyclic: — the revolutions of the year are too 
much alike to present a case of difficult identification, on which 
alone any interest hinges. In the rising and setting of the stars 
there is one point of similarity that might for a long time escape 
observation, in consequence of accompanying dissimilarities, 
namely, that in the same place the stars all rise constantly at 
the same angle, the angle being the co-latitude of the place; 
at latitude 6o° the angle is 30 , at latitude 50 it is 40 . Now 
there are two disguising differences in the rising and setting 
of the various stars; one relating to the height they reach 
when at their highest, and the other relating to their time of 
rising, which last element differs for the same star throughout 
the year. It takes a steady glance, a ready appreciation of 
mathematical elements (such as this of the angle of rising)) 
and a considerable reach of the identifying faculty to make 
out for the first time a common feature of this description in 
the midst of a dazzling and variegated scene. An absence of 
poetic feeling would be almost an indispensable requisite. 

In the vegetable kingdom, as seen in temperate and cold 
countries, men soon attain to the generalization of alternating 
life and death, in the cycle of the year. Notwithstanding the 
boundless variety and diversity of vegetable nature, this fact, 
of summer growth and autumnal fading, is too prominent to 
be disguised by the distinctions between a garden flower and 
a forest oak. It would consequently be one of the earliest 
generalizations of the human race living out of the tropics. The 
same remark would apply to the alternation of waking and 
sleeping, as a fact of animal life in general. The identification 
of the daily repose of men and animals with the hybernation 
of reptiles and some other classes, would be somewhat less 
obvious, but by no means difficult to observant men ; unless 
indeed an artificial obstruction were created by a comparison 
with death, or with the winter of vegetation, having already 






SUCCESSIONS OF EVOLUTION. 503 

got possession of men's minds. We have repeatedly had occa- 
sion for this remark, as to the influence of prepossessions in 
stifling a stroke of identity, and the present is only a fair sup- 
position of that nature. 

The steps of the generalization of the planets, or the 
tracing of a common character in spite of accompanying dis- 
similarity among these wandering bodies, would be interesting 
to follow if we could now recover them. The discovery of the 
common fact of their circling round the entire heavens was 
by no means easy in the case of the inferior planets, Mercury 
and Venus, seeing that men's minds would in their case be 
carried away with the more limited circumstances of their 
attending on the sun, and appearing as morning and evening 
stars. 

The successions of evolution are typified and principally 
constituted by the growth of living beings. Each plant and 
animal, in the course of its existence, presents a series of 
phases, and these we may watch more or less closely, so as 
the better to know the course of the evolution. With the 
fact of birth and death, as a property of all living beings, we 
become acquainted through the identifying operation which 
seizes hold of this common feature in the midst of never so 
much variety in all else that can constitute a living being. 
But identities of the special mode of growth can be traced, 
among limited groups, which are thereupon formed into 
classes; as in animals, the oviparous and viviparous. The 
successions of insect life are peculiar and interesting, and, as 
regards the distinct stages and states of existence, the identi- 
fications through the animal tribes are curious and instructive. 
Close observation of individuals is necessary to put the mind 
in a position to strike out such identities; the absence of 
vulgar wonderment, poetic illusion, and strong prepossessions 
in favour of some mistaken comparison is also very helpful. 
The physiological department called Embryology, includes 
the knowledge of the early evolution of animals, and it is 
very much dependent upon identifying the modes of growth 
of creatures considerably different from one another, as the 
"chicken with the infant. Here, however, there was no great 



504 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

reach of mind needed to suggest the identity of these two; 
the difficulty in such a case is to prove that an obvious and 
apparent identity is real and deep, or so close that what is 
known of the one member of the comparison may, with abso- 
lute certainty, be believed of the other. Whereas in other 
instances the discovery is difficult, but the proof easy, in this 
the discovery is easy, and the proof difficult. With the in- 
tellectual operations required to ascertain the reality of an 
identity seen by the intellectual glance of similarity, the logic 
of the case, we are not at present concerning ourselves. 

31. The Successions that make Human History, present 
a choice field of illustration of the mental force of Similarity. 
Nowhere are comparisons, good and bad, more abundantly 
struck. Plutarch is not the only writer that has set to work 
expressly to construct historical parallels.* In the situations 
that arise in public affairs, in the problems that have to be 
solved, in the issues of critical periods, and in the catastrophes 
that have overwhelmed empires, the intellect of enquiring and 
observing men finds numerous identities. Sometimes we 
compare the past with the present, sometimes one past epoch 
with another. And such comparisons are seldom barren 
efforts of the identifying faculty ; they are usually employed 
for some end of mutual illustration, or in order to infer in the 
one all the good or bad features belonging to the other. The 
rise of the British empire is compared by one class of minds 
to the history of the great empires of antiquity, the object of 
the comparison being to carry out the analogy to the full 
length of anticipating for Britain a similar course of decay. 
The parallelisms that set forth popular government as con- 
ducting to anarchy and ending in military despotism have 
been sufficient to satiate the reading mind of modern times. 
It is not these very large comparisons that illustrate happily 
the operation of the principle now under discussion, or that 
show the results of identification in enlarging the grasp of the 
human intellect. For these ends I should choose rather to 



* See the interesting volumes under this title, published by Charles 
Knight. 



, 



HISTORICAL COMPARISONS. 505 

point to comparisons made in very limited chains of historic 
succession. The narrower the field of view contemplated, the 
more chance there is of hitting upon a real and instructive 
comparison. Take the following from Grote's History of 
Greece. In discussing the changes made in Sj)arta by the 
institutions of Lycurgus, the historian calls in question the 
alleged re-partition of the lands of the state among the 
citizens. He shows that this is not stated by the earliest 
authorities, and that it appears to have gained credence only 
after the revolutionary proceedings of Agis and Kleomenes 
in the third century, B. C. ; at which time he thinks the idea 
grew up in consequence of its being strongly suggested by the 
present desire for a similar re-division. ' It was under the 
state of public feeling which gave birth to these projects of 
Agis and Kleomenes at Sparta, that the historic fancy, un- 
known to Aristotle and his predecessors, first gained ground, 
of the absolute equality of property as a primitive institution 
of Lycurgus. How much such a belief would favour the 
schemes of innovation is too obvious to require notice ; and 
without supposing any deliberate imposture, we cannot be 
astonished that the predispositions of enthusiastic patriots 
interpreted according to their own partialities an old unre- 
corded legislation from which they were separated by more 
than five centuries. The Lycurgean discipline tended forcibly 
to suggest to men's minds the idea of equality among the 
citizens, — that, is the negation of all inequality not founded on 
some personal attribute — inasmuch as it assimilated the habits, 
enjoyments, and capacities of the rich to those of the poor ; 
and the equality thus existing in idea and tendency, which 
seemed to proclaim the wish of the founder, was strained by 
the later reformers into a positive institution which he had at 
first realized, but from which his degenerate followers had 
receded. It was thus that the fancies, longings, and indirect 
suggestions of the present assumed the character of recollec- 
tions out of the early, obscure, and extinct historical past. 
Perhaps the philosopher Sphcerus of Borysthenes (friend and 
companion of Kleomenes, disciple of Zeno the Stoic, and 
author of works now lost both on Lycurgus and Socrates and 






506 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

on the constitution of Sparta) may have been one of those 
who gave currency to such an hypothesis. And we shall 
readily believe that if advanced, it would find easy and sincere 
credence, when we recollect how many similar delusions have 
obtained voffue in modern times far more favourable to 
historical accuracy — how much false colouring has been 
attached by the political feeling of recent days to matters of 
ancient history, such as the Saxon Witenageomote, the Great 
Charter, the rise and growth of the English House of Com- 
mons, or even the Poor Law of Elizabeth/* The comparisons 
contained in this last sentence are such as both to suggest the 
explanation above given of the rise of the belief in question, 
and to give probability to it when suggested. The same 
historian has effectively illustrated the general body of Grecian 
legends by a comparison with the middle age legends of the 
Roman Catholic Church. The range of knowledge possessed 
by an historical enquirer on the one hand, and the force of his 
identifying intellect on the other, are the sources of his fertility 
in those comparisons that illuminate the darker specks of the 
ill-recorded past. Whether those comparisons are strictly 
aj)plicable and good, depends on a quite different mental 
peculiarity, already more than once touched upon, his sense of 
accuracy and precision, or what is sometimes called the logical 
faculty. We find in history no less than in zoology, the cha- 
racteristics of the Oken mind ; a fulness of analogical suggestive- 
ness with an absence of the logical discrimination of soundness. 
32. It is not stepping far out of the class of instances 
typified in the foregoing paragraph to advert to Institutional 
comparisons, whether of different ages or of the same age. 
The social and political institutions of nations and races have 
often points of agreement in the midst of great diversity ; and 
a penetrating mind, in other words a strong identifying 
faculty, can bring together the like out of the enveloping 
clouds of unlikeness. It is easy, for example, to identify the 
fact of government as belonging to every tribe of men that 
act together ; it is not difficult further for one absolutism to 



* Vol. ii , pp. 538-40. 



INSTITUTIONAL COMPAKISONS. 507 

bring- up into the view all the other instances of absolutism 
that have at different times been impressed on one's mind ; 
and so with the consideration of free or responsible govern- 
ments. By this operation we gather up various classifica- 
tions of agreeing institutions, the one throwing light upon the 
other, and the whole concurring to make one broad luminous 
effect, which we call the general impression of government ; of 
absolutism, of constitutionalism, &c. The vast complexity and 
seemingly endless variety of human institutions is thus sim- 
plified in a remarkable degree ; out of chaos order arises, as 
soon as similarity begins to draw together the agreeing 
elements of the discordant heap. Our great writers on Society, 
Aristotle, Vico, Montesquieu, Condorcet, Millar, James Mill, 
have shown admirable tact in this kind of Comparative 
Anatomy, and with all the effects of intellectual illumination 
and expansion that flow from the bringing together of remote 
samenesses. What the historian does incidentally the writer 
on Society does upon system ; he searches the whole world 
for analogies, and finds if possible a class for every variety 
that presents itself. Forms of Government, of Legislation 
and Justice, Modes of Industry, Distribution of Wealth and 
Arrangement of Rank, Domestic Institutions, Religion, Recrea- 
tive amusements, &c, are identified and classified so far as 
they agree with notification of difference, and out of the 
particulars drawn together in a powerful identifying mind 
there crystallizes one after another the corresponding generals, 
and the human reason has made one great step in its 
endeavours to comprehend this wide subject.* 

33. To return to successions. There remains one other 
class to be cited in illustration of our general theme, namely, 
Cause and Effect, or those successions where the consequent 
depends on its antecedent, and is always produced by it. 
Here we have to remark that often the same link of causation 
occurs in circumstances so widely apart, that the sameness is 
veiled from the perception of the general mass of mind ; 



* See Millar on Ranhs, and the examination of the Hindu Institutions 
in Mill's History of British India. 



508 LAW OF SIMILAEITY. 

indeed it not seldom happens that until some preparatory opera- 
tion has had the effect of drawing aside the veil, the identity 
does not disclose itself to the most piercing intellect. Thus 
to take the two phenomena of combustion and the rusting of 
iron, it was not possible for any mind to see a common feature 
in these two effects as they appear to the common eye. A 
long series of investigations to ascertain more particularly the 
import of each of the two actions apart had first to be gone 
through. Other phenomena had to be interposed having 
relations to both, in order that actions so unlike should be 
seen as like. The experiments of Priestley upon the red 
oxide of mercury were a turning point in the rapprochement. 
These experiments showed that when mercury was burned it 
became heavier by taking in some substance from the air, 
which substance could again be driven off, and the metallic 
mercury reproduced. The act of combustion of the mercury 
was to all appearance identical with the burning of coal in a 
fire, while the resulting change on the substance, the conver- 
sion of the metal into a red powder, might suggest the process 
of the rusting of iron, the chief point of diversity being the 
time occupied in the two different operations. Through an 
intermediate phenomenon like this, the two others might 
come together in the mind as identical, and they are now 
known to be the results of the same operation, or effects of 
the same cause, namely the combination of the solid material 
with the gaseous oxygen of the atmosphere. 

In the great problem of Inductive science, stated to be the 
discovery of the effects of all causes, and of the causes of all 
effects, there are many intellectual operations gone through ; 
— the problem puts on many different aspects. But the 
importance of a powerful reach of the identifying intellect is 
constantly made manifest. Some discoveries turn upon this 
exclusively ; and no succession of discoveries can proceed 
without it. In truth the very essence of generalization being 
the bringing together of remote things through the attraction 
of sameness, this attractive energy is the right hand of a 
scientific inquirer. To cite the greatest example that the 
history of science contains, the discovery of universal gravitation, 



IDENTITIES OF SCIENTIFIC CAUSATION. 509 

or the identifying the fall of heavy bodies on the earth with the 
attraction between the sun and the planets ; this was a pure 
stroke of similarity, prepared by previous contemplation of the 
two facts apart. Newton had for years been studying the 
planetary motions : by the application of the doctrines of the 
composition and resolution of forces to the planetary move- 
ments he had found that there were two actions at work in the 
case of each planet, that one of these actions was in the 
direction of the sun, and the other in the direction of the 
planet's movement at each instant — that the effect of the first, 
acting alone, would be to draw the body to the sun, and the 
effect of the second, acting alone, would be to make it fly off at 
a tangent, or in a straight line through space. By this process 
of decomposition he had reduced the question to a much 
simpler state; he had in fact prepared the phenomenon of 
planetary motion for comparison with other movements already 
understood. This operation of analysis was itself a remarkable 
effort of intellect ; no other man of that time showed the 
capability of handling the heavenly motions with such a daring 
familiarity — of intruding into their spheres the calculations of 
a terrestrial mechanics. This preparatory operation was per- 
haps a greater feat of intellect than the flash that followed it ; 
indeed the perception of identity could not be long delayed 
after such a clearing of the way. He had familiarized him- 
self, as the result of this mechanical resolution of the forces at 
work, with the existence of an attractive force in the sun, 
which acted on all the bodies of the system, and he had dis- 
covered by a further effort of calculation that this force varied 
inversely as the square of the distance. As yet the phenomenon 
of solar attraction stood solitary in his mind, but it stood out 
as a remarkably clear and definite conception, so definite and 
clear that if ever he came to encounter any other phenomenon 
of the same nature, the two would in all probability flash 
together on his mind. Such was the preparation on the one 
side, the shaping of one of the two individual phenomena 
destined to become one. Then as to the other member. He 
had been familiarized with the falling of bodies from his 
infancy, like everybody else ; and the impression that it had 



510 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

made for a length of time was as superficial as it had been in 
the minds of his brethren of mankind. It was to him as to 
them a phenomenon of sensible weight, hurts, breakage; it 
rendered necessary supports and resistance. This was the 
view naturally impressed upon his mind, and in this encum- 
bered condition an identity with the pure and grand approach 
of the distant planets towards the sun, while yet held at dis- 
tance from him, was not to be looked for even in the mind of 
Newton, whose identifying reach was doubtless of the first 
order. He had been for a length of time in possession of the 
prepared idea of solar force, without its ever bringing to his 
mind for comparison the familiar fact of a body falling to the 
earth. It was obviously necessary that some preparatory 
operation should take place upon this notion likewise ; some 
contemplation that would partially clear it of the accompani- 
ments of mere smash, breakage, weight, support, &c, and hold 
it up in its purest form of a general movement of all free 
bodies towards the earth's surface, or rather in the direction of 
the earth's centre. Here too there was need of an analytic or 
disentangling procedure, an operation very distasteful and 
repulsive to the common mind, and stamping the scientific 
character upon any intellect that is at home in it. At what 
time Newton laid his analytic grasp upon this ancient experi- 
ence of our race we may not now be able precisely to deter- 
mine ; it may have been the commonly recounted incident of 
the fall of the apple that set his mind to work, or it may have 
come round in the course of his studies of terrestrial phenomena. 
But I cannot help supposing that when the phenomenon was 
once taken to task in the way he had already been accustomed 
to deal with such things, he would very soon identify and 
eliminate the main fact from all the confusing circumstantials, 
and see in it an instance of the motion of one body towards 
another by virtue of some inherent power in the attracting 
over the attracted mass. This eliminating generalization 
would present the case pure and prepared to his mind, as the 
other had already been by a previous operation ; and then 
came the flash of identification, and with it the sublime dis- 
covery that brought heaven down to earth, and made a com- 



DISCOVERT OF THE LAW OF GRAVITATION. 51 i 

mon force prevail throughout the solar system. Not less to 
his honour than the discovery itself was his reserving the 
announcement until such time as the proof was rendered 
complete by the arrival of an accurate estimate of the magni- 
tude of the earth, which was a necessary datum in the verifying 
operation. 

This great stretch of identification, perhaps the widest 
leap that the intellect of man has had the opportunity of 
achieving, not only illustrates the mental attraction of sirnL 
larity, it also presents in relief the preparation of the mind 
for bringing on the flash. We see the necessity there was 
for a powerful mathematical faculty to seize the laws of the 
composition and resolution of forces, and apply them to the 
complicated case of elliptic motion; in this application Newton 
already made a step beyond any mathematician of the age. 
We observe in the next place the intense hold that the 
mathematical aspect of the phenomena took on his mind, how 
he could set aside or conquer all the other aspects so much 
more imposing in the popular eye, and which had led to 
quite different hypotheses of the cause of the celestial move- 
ments. This characteristic shines remarkable through all the 
scientific writings of Newton ; however fascinating a phe- 
nomenon may be, he has always his mind ready to seize it 
with the mathematical pincers, and regard it in that view 
alone. His mode of dealing with the subject of Light is an 
instance no less striking than the one we have been now 
setting; forth. There was in him either an absolute indif- 
ference to all the popular and poetic aspects of an appearance, 
or a preference for the scientific side strong enough to set all 
these aside. The example he set of uncompromising adhe- 
rence to the relations of number and measured force was 
probably the most influential result of his genius at a time 
when physical science was as yet unemancipated from the 
trammels of a half-poetic style of theorising. The purification 
and regeneration of the scientific method was quite as much 
owing to the example of Newton as to the rhetorical enforce- 
ments of Bacon. The human intellect was braced by dwelling 
in his atmosphere, and his avatar was the foremost circum- 



512 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

stance in giving a superior stamp to the career of thought in 
the eighteenth century. 

To these two peculiarities of the Newtonian mind, — 
mathematical power, and exclusive regard to the mathematical 
and mechanical, in other words, the strictly scientific aspect 
of the phenomena to be studied, — I have added a third, 
which although not radically distinct from these, deserves 
separate notice ; I mean analytic force, or the tendency to 
separate the effects that an object has on the mind or senses, 
and to concentrate the regard on one particular at a time. 
Thus we have seen that a falling body produces a very com- 
plex impression, — a gross and multifarious effect, — and this 
total mass of sensation and feeling is the popular notion of the 
phenomenon. No accurate knowledge can grow out of such 
aggregates ; they are the soil of poetry, not science. I shall 
illustrate afterwards the nature of this force or impulse of 
mind that resists the totalizing influence of a complex object, 
and isolates for study and comparison its individual effects ; I 
remark it here as the volitional, or what may be loosely styled 
the moral, element of the scientific intellect ; it stood forth in 
singular grandeur in the mind of Newton. All the three 
peculiarities now stated came in aid of the identifying stretch 
of similarity, but could not dispense with the presence of this 
also in a high degree of tenseness in his mind. 

REASONING AND SCIENCE IN GENERAL. 

34. Not to mention the examples that we have just parted 
from, many of the instances of similarity already adduced in the 
course of our exposition are strictly of a scientific nature. I 
think it right, notwithstanding, to devote a separate head to 
the operation of the law in the various scientific processes, 
with a view to elucidating farther both it and them. I shall 
therefore make the illustration fall under the four divisions of 
Abstraction, Induction, Deduction, and Analogy. 

Classification, Abstraction, Generalization of Notions, 
General Names, Definitions. — These designations all express 
substantially the same operation, that of identifying a number 



ABSTRACTIVE GENERALIZATIONS. 513 

of different objects on some one common feature,, and of 
seizing and marking that feature as a distinct subject of con- 
sideration ; the identification being a pure effort of similarity. 
Thus we identify the different running streams that have come 
under our observation, in consequence of the sameness that 
stands prominent in the midst of much diversity; any new one 
will recal the previous ones, and they are assembled together 
in the mind not as a miscellaneous aggregate, but as a class 
strung together on a common thread. In this connexion 
they serve to improve our comprehension one of the other ; 
some we know chiefly at the sources, others at the mouth, 
some in the mountains, others in the plains ; accordingly we 
supply gaps in our knowledge of one by means of the rest. 
We may go the length of deriving out of the fragmentary 
views some one unbroken whole, an ideal river, that shall 
include all the features of a perfect river in goodly propor- 
tions ; or we may simply choose one that we know better 
than the rest as our representative instance, and from it supply 
blanks in our view of those that we have less perfectly 
examined. This mutual supply of defects in the view is one 
of the advantages of assembling objects in a class ; a second 
advantage is the substitution of one for another in any prac- 
tical end ; we know, for example, by the experience of one 
case that a river bank is a convenient site for a town or 
village, and in consequence of the discovery of identity we can 
choose any one of all the rivers in our knowledge for the same 
object. Here, then, we have first a classification, assembled 
by the attraction of similarity; secondly a generalization, or 
general notion, or abstract idea, being some typical river that 
fairly represents the group, and in which we include only what 
they all have in common ; this typical river may be one of 
the number, or it may be a composition out of several. Thirdly, 
we have the application of a general name to the class, the 
name ' river/ which shall express both the whole, and what 
each has in common with every other. A fourth operation is 
all that is necessary to complete the work, namely, to furnish 
a definition or an expression in language of the class features 

L L 



514* LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

or common properties* of the class. This exhausts the line of 
operations connected with the generalization of an object 
taken as a total or a unity ; of these the first alone grows out 
of pure Similarity, the others suppose a somewhat more com- 
plicated action, to be afterwards described. 

Take again the genus of round bodies. As before, these 
are mustered in a class by the attraction of sameness ; their 
classification has the effects already specified of mutual en- 
lightenment and mutual exchangeability. To clench the 
operation we seize upon some one instance as a representative 
or typical instance, and our idea of this we call the abstract, 
or general, idea. We can here adopt a very refined method ; 
we can draw an outline circle, omitting all the .solid substance, 
and presenting only naked form to the eye ; this is an abstrac- 
tion of a higher order than we could gain by choosing a speci- 
men circular object, as a wheel, for it leaves out all the features 
wherein circular bodies differ, and gives the point of agreement 
in a state of isolation. The mathematical diagram is thus a more 
perfect abstract idea than the idea of a river or a mountain, 
derived from a fair average specimen, or a composed river or 
mountain ; these last scarcely come up to the meaning of an 
abstraction, although when properly managed they serve all the 
ends of such. But we may pass in the present case also from an 
abstract conception, or a diagram, to a Definition by descriptive 
words, and we may adopt this as our general conception, and 
use it in all our operations instead of or along with the other.f 
The definition is in fact the highest form of the abstract idea, 
the form that we constantly fall back upon as the test or 
standard for trying any new claim of admission into the class, 
or for revising the list of those already admitted. 

35. Induction, Inductive Generalization, Conjoined Pro- 
perties, Affirmations, Propositions, Laws of Nature. — The 
contrast between Abstraction and Induction as here under- 
stood may be expressed thus : in the one a single isolated 



* A river maybe defined ' a natural current of water flowing in an open 
channel towards the sea,' or to that effect. 

f A circle is defined to he a line everywhere at an equal distance from 
a point which is the centre. 



INDUCTIVE GENERALIZATIONS. 515 

property, or a collection of properties treated as a unity, is 
identified and generalized ; in the other a conjunction, union, 
or concurrence of two distinct properties is identified. When 
we bring all rivers into one class, and define the property 
common to all, we exemplify the first process ; the second 
process, Induction, is exemplified when we note the fact that 
rivers wear away their beds, or the fact that they deposit 
deltas at their mouths. In this case two different things are 
conjoined; the flow of water over a country to the sea in an 
open channel, which makes the idea of a river, is associated 
with the circumstance of depositing or forming land in a par- 
ticular situation. This conjunction makes an Affirmation, or a 
Proposition ; the idea of a river by itself, or anything expressed 
by a noun substantive, is not an affirmation. When we affirm 
the uniform co-existence of two distinct facts, we have a Law 
of Nature, an intellectual possession respecting the world, an 
extension of our knowledge, a shortening of labour. Of the 
two conjoined things the presence of one is at any time suffi- 
cient to assure us of the presence of the other, without farther 
examination. As surely as we meet with a river, so surely shall 
we find the carrying down of mud to be deposited at the 
mouth, if the two facts be really connected as we suppose. 
An abstraction or definition gives us a general idea, it assem- 
bles a class of things marked by the presence of this common 
feature, — the class river, the class circle, the class red, the class 
planet, the class just, — but does not convey a proposition, a 
law of nature, a truth. 

In forming these inductive generalizations we need the 
identifying impetus pretty much as in abstractive generaliza- 
tions. The case is distinguished only by being more complex ; 
it is properly a stage beyond the other in the order of dis- 
covery, although the two are very apt to be mixed up and 
determined by one and the same effort of the sense and under- 
standing. Still in order to possess the law that rivers form 
bars and deltas, we require to have observed the peculiarities 
of rivers, and to have been struck at some moment with their 
identity on this point ; standing at the mouth of one and 
observing the island which parts its stream, we are reminded 

ll2 



516 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

by a stroke of reinstating similarity of the mouth of some 
other where a similar formation occurs, with perhaps many 
points of diversity of circumstances. These two coming 
together will bring up others, until we have assembled in the 
mind's eye the whole array that our memory contains. This 
is the first stage of an inductive discovery; it is the suggestion 
of a law of nature, which we are next to express and verify. 
The conflux of all the separate examples in one view indicates 
to the mind the common conjunction, and out of this we make 
a general affirmation, as in the other process Ave make a 
general notion or idea. But a general affirmation by language 
makes in this case a proposition, not a definition ; it requires a 
verb for its expression, and carries a law or a truth, something 
to be believed and acted on. 

In like manner, it is by an identification of the separate 
instances falling under our notice, that we are struck with the 
conjunction in an animal of cloven hoofs with the act of 
ruminating and with herbaceous food. So, to take a more 
abstruse example, we identify the conjunction of transparent 
bodies with the bending of the rays of light; these transparent 
bodies are of very various nature, — air, water, glass, crystalline 
minerals; but after a certain length of observation the identity 
makes itself felt through them all. By an abstractive process, 
we gain the general idea of transparency ; by looking not simply 
at the fact of the luminous transmission but at the direction 
of the light, we generalize an induction, a proposition, conjoin- 
ing two properties instead of isolating one. The operation of 
induction is thus of the same nature, but more arduous and 
implying more labour, than the operation of abstraction, being, 
however, much more pregnant with results. The same cast of 
mind favours both ; the same obstructions block the way. 
To make a scientific induction, the mind must have the power 
of regarding the scientific properties and disregarding the 
unscientific aspects ; in discovering the refraction of light, the 
attention must fasten on the circumstance of mathematical 
direction, and must not be carried away with vulgar wonder- 
ment at the distorting effect upon objects seen through water 
or glass. To take in the more abstruse and dissimilar instances, 



INDUCTIONS FITTED INTO PREVIOUS FORMULAS. 517 

as the refractive influence of the air, there is needed a prepa- 
ration similar to that already exemplified in the identification 
of burning and rusting. A powerful reach of the identifying 
faculty must always be implied in great scientific discoverers. 

Sometimes an induction from a few identified particulars 
can be fitted in to a previously established formula or gene- 
ralization. The above instance of the refraction of light fur- 
nishes a case in point ; and I quote it as a further example of 
the identifying operation. The bending of the light on 
entering or leaving a surface of glass, water, or other trans- 
parent material, varies with the inclination of the ray to the 
surface ; at a right angle there is no bending, at all other 
angles refraction occurs, and it is greater as the course is 
farther from the right angle, being greatest of all when the 
ray lays over so much as almost to run along the surface. Now 
an important identification was here discovered by Snell, 
namely, the identity of the rate of refraction at different angles 
with the trigonometrical relation of the sines of the angles, 
expressed thus: — the sines of the angles of incidence and refrac- 
tion bear a constant proportion within the same medium, or 
the same kind of material. Here the observed amount of the 
bending at different angles was found to accord with a foregone 
relation of the mathematical lines connected with the circle. 
This too may be looked upon as a discovery of identification, 
demanding in the discoverer not only reach of the faculty 
similarity, but antecedent acquirements in the geometry of the 
circle, ready to be started by such a case of parallelism as the 
above. Inductions falling into numerical and geometrical 
relations previously excogitated occur very frequently in the 
progress of discovery All Kepler's laws are identifications of 
this nature ; the third law, which connects the distances of the 
planets from the sun with their periodic times, is a remarkable 
case. He had before him two parallel columns of numbers, 
six in the column, corresponding to the six known planets ; 
one column contained the distances, another the times of 
revolution ; and he set himself to ascertain whether the rela- 
tions of these numbers could come under any one rule of 
known proportions: — they were not in a simple proportion, 



518 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

direct or inverse, and they were not as the squares, nor as the 
cubes ; they turned out at last to be a complication of square 
and cube. The law of areas is perhaps an equally remarkable 
example of a series of particulars embraced in an all-compre- 
hending formula got out of the existing stores of mathematical 
knowledge; but in all these discoveries of Kepler, we are 
perhaps to admire the aims and determination and persever- 
ance of his mind still more than the grasp of his intellect. 
We have before remarked that for a man to extricate himself 
from the prevailing modes of viewing natural appearances, and 
to become attached to a totally different aspect, is itself the proof 
of a superior nature, and often the principal turning point of 
original discovery. The identifying faculty in Kepler showed 
itself less prominently in the strokes of detail, than in the 
mode of taking up the entire problem, the detection of a common 
character in the motions of the planets and the relations of 
numbers and curves. To make that a pure mathematical 
problem, which really is one, but has not hitherto been suffi- 
ciently regarded as such, is itself a great stroke of the scientific 
intellect ; it was the glory alike of Kepler and of Newton. A 
previously equipped mathematical mind, an indifference or 
superiority to poetical and fanciful aspects, and a high reach 
of identifying force, concur in all the authors of discoveries 
that bind the conjunctions of nature in mathematical laws. 
The great revolution in Chemistry made by the introduction of 
definite combining numbers has been even more rapidly 
prolific of great consequences than the discoveries that gave 
Mechanics, Astronomy, and Optics the character of mathe- 
matical sciences. The introduction of vigorous numerical 
conceptions into the subtle phenomena of Heat, through 
Black's doctrine of latent heat, exhibits a stroke of high 
intellect not inferior to any of those now adduced. The diffi- 
culty of seizing the phenomena of freezing, melting, boiling, 
and condensing, in a bald, numerical estimate, is attested by 
the lateness of the discovery, if not sufficiently apparent to one 
that considers how very different from this is the impression 
that these effects have on the common mind. The engrossing 
sensations of warmth and cold, the providing of fuel aud 



INFERENCE OR DEDUCTION. 519 

clothing, the prevention of draughts, or the admission of cool 
air, are the trains of thought usually suggested by the various 
facts of congelation, liquefaction, &c. ; to enter upon the other 
trains is the result of a special training and endowment, the 
explanation of which according to general laws of mind has 
been one of the aims of our protracted examination of the 
human intellect. 

36. Inference, Deduction, Ratiocination, Syllogism, 
Application or Extension of Inductions. — I have repeatedly 
urged the value of the identifying process in extending our 
knowledge, by transferring all that has been ascertained in 
some one case to every other case of the same description. 
This operation is described under all the above titles. It is an 
Inference, a Deduction, a step of Reasoning, the Extension of 
an Affirmation from the known to the unknown. The discovery 
of a true identity* between the new cases and the old is a 
justification of this transference of properties. Having, for 
example, observed in innumerable cases that human beings 
go through a course of birth, maturity, decay, and death, we 
transfer their fate to those now alive, and we declare before- 
hand that each and all of these will go through the same 
course ; this is to make an inference, to reason, to apply our 
knowledge to new cases, to know the future from the past, the 
absent from the present. So, when we land on the banks of 
a strange river, we instantly proceed on the assumption that 
this river has its origin in high lands, its destination in the 
sea, and has at its mouth a deposit of mud of larger or smaller 
dimensions. The little that we see of the river, by walking a 
few miles along its bank is enough to identify it with the 
rivers already known to us, or with our general notion, or 
abstract idea, or definition of a river, and. on this identity we 
forthwith transfer all our experience connected with rivers in 
general, and all their conjoined phenomena, to the newly 



* It is not within the scope of this treatise to explain fully the nature 
of the evidence which the scientific man requires in order to be satisfied 
that a supposed identity is real, true, or genuine, or a sufficient basis for 
deductive inference. Such an explanation is most amply supplied in the 
work mentioned in the next paragraph. 



520 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

occurring individual case. When our knowledge comes thus to 
transcend our actual experience, an inference or act of De- 
duction or ratiocination is performed. 

Mr. John Stuart Mill, in his System of Logic, has shown, 
I think, conclusively, that the basis of all inference is a transi- 
tion from particulars to particulars, and not, as usually 
supposed, the application of a general affirmation to the special 
affirmations included in it. In fact he maintains that when we 
say all men are mortal, we have already inferred the utmost 
that it is possible to infer ; for out of our experience of the 
men that have lived and died, we have constructed an assertion 
applying to all men now living and all that are yet to be born, 
so that no further deduction remains to be made ; the applying 
of this affirmation to a particular individual or tribe, as to the 
present inhabitants of London, or the present Emperor of 
China, is not an inference, it is but to enunciate in detail 
what has been already enunciated in the gross or total — it is 
not to make any new step, or to take up with any new piece 
of information, any new belief. Hence to syllogise is only 
to go through a form of reasoning ; it is to take precaution 
against one particular source of mistake, namely, the mistake 
of wrongfully including an individual in a general class. If 
we say all men are mortal, therefore the angel Gabriel will 
die, the badness of the reasoning will be exposed by giving it 
the syllogistic form, thus : all men are mortal, the angel 
Gabriel is a man, Gabriel will die. Here, by completing the 
form, we see what assertions we make previously to drawing 
the conclusion, and that while the major or principal proposi- 
tion, all men are mortal, is true, the second, or minor pro- 
position, that Gabriel belongs to the class of men, must also 
be verified. The stress of the syllogism lies not in extending 
our knowledge to new cases, for this extension is complete 
when a general proposition is risked, but in making sure of 
the relevancy, the applicability to the case in hand; it 
requires a solemn, deliberate, overt assertion of the identity of 
the specific case with the cases contemplated in the already 
generalized affirmation ; and we presume that a person in 
making this assertion feels that he ought to be quite certain of 



EXTENSION OF THE KNOWN TO THE UNKNOWN. 521 

its accuracy before committing himself to such a broad avowal 
as this formality brings him to. 

This process of inference or extension of properties, there- 
fore, evidently comes of the identifying faculty, by which 
the new cases and the old are brought together in the view. 
If the question be, given a certain number of particulars, 
where a natural law is repeated, to discover other particulars 
whereto we may extend or apply the law and so reveal new 
.characters in those particulars, these new cases must be sum- 
moned to the view by a stroke of similarity. For example, 
Newton observed in various cases that when a transparent 
body is largely made up of combustible matter, as an oil or a 
resin, that it bends light to an unusual degree; in other 
words, he made an induction of particulars where combusti- 
bility of substance and excessive bending of light were con- 
joined properties. He next bethought himself of any other 
substances, besides those in the immediate view that possessed 
one of these properties, and his recollection of the refracting 
power of the diamond responded to his call by a stroke of 
similarity; he thereupon extended to the diamond the other 
property, namely, combustibility of material, or inferred what 
no one had ever experienced, that the diamond is a combustible 
substance, a singular exception to the class of precious stones. 
This active obtrusion of observed coincidences upon all parallel 
cases, this laying out the mind for the suggestion of new par- 
ticulars to have the observed properties thrust upon them, is 
one of the ways of extending the domain of knowledge. The 
enquirer has got in his hand a clue, and makes a business of 
following it out wherever he can find an opening ; he has 
made his induction, and lies in wait for occasions of pushing it 
out into deductions. In this endeavour his identifying faculty 
will avail him much ; it will make him as it were keen-scented 
for everything in the memory of the past that bears a shadow 
of resemblance to his case; the recollections that in an obtuse 
mind would lie unawakened by the magnetism of similarity, in 
the mind of the other start out one by one for examination 
and choice; and in this lies the harvest home of the man of 
intellect. 



522 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

We can next suppose the opposite case ; given a dark spot, 
an obscure phenomenon, to illuminate it by bringing forward 
parallels or identities among phenomena that are clear and 
intelligible, supposing such to have actually occurred at some 
time or other, but in a connexion altogether remote from the 
present difficulty, so that only the force of similarity can 
bring them up. The position of the enquirer is now altered ; 
nevertheless the intellectual operation is the same; to summon 
the clear to illuminate the dark, or to summon the dark to be 
illuminated by the clear, must alike proceed on a felt identity, 
which identity is both the mental link of attraction and the 
circumstance that justifies the transference of information 
from the one to the other. Of the instances already brought 
forward several would correspond to this supposition; but 
instead of recurring to these we will cite the great identity 
struck out by Franklin, between the thunder and lightning of 
the sky, and electricity as shown on the common electrical 
machine. Next to the discovery of gravitation, this is perhaps 
the most remarkable fetch of remote identification that the 
history of science presents. The phenomenon of the thundery 
discharge was an exceedingly obscure and mysterious action; 
the natural obscurity of the case was farther increased by the 
emotions that it habitually inspired in men's minds, for 
nothing is more difficult than to identify, on a mere intel- 
lectual similarity, what excites deep emotions (especially fear) 
with what excites no emotion at all. Only a cool intellectual 
nature such as distinguished Franklin was a match for a case 
like this. He could face the evolution of a thunder-storm, 
and watch it with all the calmness that he would have 
shown in an ordinary philosophical experiment, deliberately 
bethinking himself the while of any parallel phenomenon 
wherewith he could identify and illustrate it. Had he 
taken up the inquiry a century earlier his attempt would 
have been in vain; for among all the scientific facts that 
could have crossed his view in the middle of the seven- 
teenth century, no degree of identifying energy would have 
been able to summon up a single one to compare with the 
case in hand. In the eighteenth century his position was 



REASONING BY ANALOGY. 523 

different; the electrical machine was a familiar instrument, 
and an intelligible account of its phenomena had been ren- 
dered ; and these phenomena had been studied by Franklin, 
and were vividly impressed on his mind. To his cool eye 
gazing on the storm, the forked lightning identified itself (in 
the midst of a diversity that few other minds could have 
broken through) with the spark of an electrical discharge. 
This was indeed the only feature of resemblance, unless a 
favourable accident had revealed some other coincidence, such 
as the existence of an electrical charge in the clouds before a 
storm ; and I consider the identification to have been a stroke 
of similarity of the very first order. It took all the prepa- 
ration of an accurate study of the parallel subject of common 
electricity, with the passionless temperament and the strong 
intellect of Franklin, to achieve such a conquest over the 
obscurity that shrouds the atmospheric agencies. The identity 
once struck was duly verified, and proved to be a real and not 
a superficial or apparent sameness; being, in fact, the same 
natural power showing itself in widely different situations. 
Then came all the deductive applications; the circumstances 
known to accompany and precede the discharge of a Leyden 
jar could be transferred to the electrical storm; — the charging 
of the clouds with one electricity and the earth with an op- 
posite, the increase of electrical tension to the pitch that an 
intervening insulator could no longer restrain, the shock of dis- 
charge, — were seen through the medium of the familiar parallel 
to be the history of the lightning and thunder of the sky. 
Every new fact ascertained in the machine could thenceforth 
be extended to the atmosphere; what could not be discovered 
there at first hand could still be known through the medium 
of deductive inference. 

The subject of electricity could furnish me with many 
other examples of scientific identification on a great scale, but 
my limits forbid me to dwell upon them. 

37. Reasoning by A nalogy. The three foregoing sections 
comprehend the leading processes of scientific discovery; every 
great step in science is either an Abstraction, an Induction, or 
a Deduction. But resort is occasionally had to Analogy, as a 



524 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

substitute for identity, as a basis of Deduction or Inference ; 
and for our purpose of illustrating similarity, the striking out 
of analogies is very much in point. As an example of analo- 
gical reasoning or inference, I may take the comparison of 
human society to a family, with the transfer of the duties 
and powers of the head of the family to the sovereign of the 
state; this transfer is an inference or deduction, and is often 
tendered as a reason for the tutelary and despotical character 
of the sovereign. The two cases are not identical ; they have 
an analogy, and a good reasoner remarks how far the analogy 
holds, and confines his inferences within those limits. In like 
manner, human society has suggested the analogy of herds 
and hives, an analogy much insisted on by Aristotle. A mind 
well stored with numerous conceptions, the fruit of various 
studies, and having at the same time a good reach of the 
identifying faculty, can strike out analogies when identities 
fail; and by means of these a certain amount of insight is 
sometimes obtainable. We have had occasion to advert to 
one remarkable scientific analogy, namely, that between nerve 
force and common electricity, from which we have not hesi- 
tated to draw inferences in order to support the view taken of 
the manner of working of the nervous system. Sometimes a 
farther investigation will convert an analogy into an identity, 
as was the case with gravitation, if it be true that Hooke went 
so far as to quote terrestrial gravity as an illustration of solar 
attraction. But analogies in the proper sense of the word are 
similarities of relation in diversity of subject, as in the case of 
society above quoted, where the analogical character is the 
permanent fact The circumstance of evolution attaching to the 
vegetable and animal kingdoms, the successive stages of birth, 
growth and decay, is but an analogy as between a plant and 
an animal; to a still greater degree is this the case when we 
are comparing the mental development of a human being 
with the growth of a tree, not to speak of the much more 
remote comparison between the growth of humanity, as a 
whole, and the progress of an individual plant, or animal. 
This last analogy is, indeed, too faint to be of any value, and 



MECHANICAL INVENTIONS. 525 

is misleading if deductions are made from it. The logical 
caution that must accompany discoveries of supposed identity 
is still more requisite in the slippery regions of analogy. 



BUSINESS AND PRACTICE. 

38. In Business and Industry, in the power of intelligence 
applied to the affairs of life, in practical genius, we find 
exemplified the discovery of deep identities amid superficial 
differences. In the inventions of practical art, no less than 
in the discoveries of science, the identifying faculty is called 
into play. 

The labours of Watt, in the steam engine, might with 
great propriety be cited, to correspond with the greatest 
strokes of scientific identification. Perhaps his ' governor 
balls' is the most illustrative example for our present purpose. 
Here he had to hit upon a method of opening and closing a 
valve, in connexion with the diminution or increase of the 
speed of a very rapid wheel movement ; and no device in the 
range of existing machinery would answer this object. He 
had therefore to venture out into the region of mechanical 
possibility, to seek among mechanical laws in general, or 
among very remote natural phenomena, for a parallel situa- 
tion ; and he found the only case that has yet been hit upon, 
namely, the action of a centrifugal force, where two revolving 
bodies separate, or come together, according as the rate of 
revolution is accelerated or retarded. I am not aware of any 
stroke of remote identification in the history of mechanical 
invention, surpassing this in intellectual reach ; if such a 
power of bringing together the like out of the unlike were 
of usual occurrence, the progress of discovery would be incal- 
culably more rapid. Another instance of Watt's power of 
identifying a practical situation with some other case where 
the requisite construction is given, was the suggestion of a 
lobster-jointed pipe, for conveying water across the bottom of 
the river Clyde, and which answered perfectly. The inventive 
genius is ever ready with a suggestion derived from some 



526 LAW OP SIMILARITY. 

already existing device disguised by considerable disparity, 
either in the arrangements of nature or in the constructions 
of art. Identifying power, although not expressing every- 
thing that constitutes an inventor, will always be found a 
prominent feature in the character. As in all other depart- 
ments, the identifying power must ply its energy in the 
proper region, and this is determined by the nature of the 
previous acquisitions, and the attraction of the mind for the 
specific class of objects wherein the invention shows itself. 

An isolated discovery may prove but little as to the 
intellect of the discoverer, but a career of invention implies a 
large reach of the identifying faculty. The fertility of new 
suggestions displayed by some minds is a distinction founded on 
the power of piercing through disguises and bringing past and 
present together through an energetic force of reinstatement. 
Great inventors in all regions of practice, — whether in mecha- 
nical industry, government, laws, military affairs, medicine, 
education, — could be proved to abound in these strokes of 
similarity ; and it would be seen that whatever other circum- 
stances might contribute to their sagacity, this is the most 
indispensable. 

39. In the able administration of private business and 
public affairs, we shall be able to detect the same force 
at work, although it may not in this case be called invention 
or genius. Either in meeting new cases, or in bringing 
superior methods to bear upon old, there is a march of mind, 
an advance over routine, which marks the able administrator ; 
and here too the link of power consists in a more than ordinary 
force of identification. When a present emergency is exactly 
like a previous one, it recals that one without difficulty, and is 
treated as that was treated ; when it corresponds exactly to no 
one previous, a subtler mind is wanted ; a parallel must be 
sought for away from the routine of cases. Into quite remote 
regions of affairs the man of penetration is carried, and finds 
something in point where perhaps no parallel was ever drawn 
before. The application of the Syllogism to Law pleadings 
was a great legal improvement, which has persisted while 
scholastic forms have gone generally into decay. No routine 



TRANSFER OF PRACTICAL DEVICES. 527 

lawyer was capable of such an innovation. If for illustration's 
sake we suppose it to have been the work of one person, 
it implies a mind that came to the study of law previously 
prepared with the scholastic training, and detecting in the 
pleadings before the courts a real identity in form with 
the discussions of the schools, although hitherto conducted 
with no such method or precision. The transference of 
the syllogism to the legal reasonings would be the consequence 
of this feeling of identity ; and hence would arise that capital 
requirement of making parties plead to the law and to 
the facts of the case separately, instead of huddling up both 
in one argument as is usually done in the controversies 
of every-day life. An innovation of this nature would be not 
unlikely to be introduced when cases arose of more than 
usual perplexity, such as make manifest the inadequacy 
of existino- methods. 

It is a usual circumstance for practical devices to be first 
hit upon in obvious cases, and thence transferred to other 
cases of a like nature but of more complexity. Thus in the 
great institution of the Division of Labour now so widely 
ramified over all departments of industry, a progressive appli- 
cation could be traced ; we should find it commencing in 
manual industry, in the separation of the primitive classes of 
agriculturist, artisan, trader, soldier, and priest, and, in later 
times especially, extended into the large manufactory, into 
public business, and scientific research. In every new step 
there would arise in the mind of some one person or other a 
feeling of similarity between the exigencies of a business in 
hand and the cases where the method of divided labour was 
already in operation, and this identification would suggest the 
further extension of the practice. I do not at present speak 
of the faculty required for overcoming the difficulties of detail 
in all new applications of old machinery, (although here 
too it would be found that a fertile power of recalling identities 
in diversity would be the principal instrument of success in so 
far as the intellect was concerned,) I confine myself to the 
broad suggestion of a device through derivation from some 
existing parallel case. 



528 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

In the progress of free governments there has been 
gradually diffused from the lower to the higher and more 
difficult posts the principle of responsibility as a check upon 
the abuse of power. This practice grew up by a process of 
extension, until in the constitutional governments of Great 
Britain and the United States it came to include every 
executive officer in all departments of state. The experience 
had of the practice in the more humble functionaries suggested 
its application to the exactly parallel case of superior officers, 
and after much struggle, not of an intellectual kind, it got to 
be introduced into modern free communities, as it had been 
in the constitution of ancient Athens. 

The principle of non-interference with individual tastes 
and sentiments, except in so far as these affect the legitimate 
happiness of others, is recognised in certain cases, and has had 
a tendency to expand itself by assimilation into cases en- 
cumbered with obstructive circumstances. Hence has sprung 
up what amount of toleration in belief and conduct we now 
enjoy ; but the difficulty in proceeding far with this extension 
shows how powerfully such sentiments as the love of domina- 
tion and of uniformity may stifle the assimilating action of the 
intellect. 

In the suggestions of a practical mind, the identification 
must always turn upon the relevant circumstances, and over- 
come other attractions of sameness on irrelevant points. To 
attain to this characteristic is the end of a practical education, 
which makes the person familiar with the aspects that serve 
the ends contemplated. Thus a lawyer in recovering from his 
past experience the precedents and analogies suitable to 
a case in hand is impelled by the force of similarity working 
in his mind ; but, of the many peculiarities of the case, 
he excludes the assimilating action of all except the one that 
would govern its decision before a judge. His education 
must serve him in making this discrimination ; and if (as will 
happen) he is by natural temperament keenly alive to this 
one feature that constitutes legal relevancy, and indifferent to 
all other points of interest in the case, he is a born lawyer, 
just as Newton with his natural avidity for mathematical 






PERSUASIVE ART. 529 

relations and indifference to sensuous and poetic effects was 
a born natural philosopher, or Milton by the opposite cha- 
racter was a born poet. That nature should chance to turn 
out a legal mind is not singular or surprising, for it is only a 
variety of the scientific or logical intellect using verbal forms 
as the instrument, and implying an obtuseness to all the more 
popular and interesting features of human life. To secure a 
vigorous uniformity of dealing with disputes, scientific defini- 
tions must be made and equally applied in sj)ite of the widest 
diversity in the cases ; even though the consequence some- 
times be that a wrongdoer is set free and an innocent man 
punished. 

The same remark would apply to the discrimination 
of disease by the medical practitioner. To identify a set 
of symptoms with former cases on the real circumstance that 
determines the disease and the treatment, and not • on a 
circumstance pointing to some other disease, is the essence of 
professional skill. No incidental accompaniments must blind 
him to the true features of identity ; his sense of the essential 
symptoms needs to be keen and unwavering in the midst of a 
variety of confusing elements. If the natural impressibility of 
his eye, or his hand, be for appearances or effects not relevant 
in the discrimination of disease, he lodges an enemy in his own 
frame, and would better have sought some other occupation. 
In such a mind the greater the force of similarity the more 
misleading its workings, until a laborious education has made 
the faint but true perceptions victorious over the vivid and false. 

40. The last form of practical ability that I shall here 
advert to is Persuasion. This implies that some course of 
conduct shall be so described or expressed as to coincide, or be 
identified, with the active impulses of the individuals addressed, 
and thereby command their adoption of it by the force 
of their own natural dispositions. A leader of banditti has to 
deal with a class of persons whose ruling impulse is plunder ; 
and it becomes his business to show them that any scheme of 
his proposing will lead to this end. A people with an intense 
overpowering patriotism, as the old Romans, can be acted on 
by showing them that the interests of country are at 

MM 



530 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

stake. The fertile oratorical mind is one that can identify 
a case in hand with a great number of the strongest beliefs of 
an audience ; and more especially with those that seem 
at first sight to have no connexion with the point to 
be carried. The discovery of identity in diversity is never 
more called for than in the attempts to move men to adopt 
some new and unwonted course of proceeding. When some 
new reform is introduced in the state, it is usually thought 
necessary to reconcile and identify it in many ways with 
the ancient venerated constitution, or with the prevailing 
maxims and modes of feeling with which it would seem 
at variance. To be a persuasive speaker it is necessary to 
have vividly present to the view all the leading impulses and 
convictions of the persons addressed, and to be ready to catch 
at every point of identity between these and the propositions 
or projects presented for their adoption. The first of these 
qualifications grows out of the experience and study of 
character ; the other is the natural force of similarity, which 
has often been exemplified in its highest range in oratorical 
minds. In the speeches of Burke we see it working with 
remarkable vigour. Perhaps the most striking instance of 
this fertility of identification for persuasive ends is exhibited 
in Milton's Defence of Unlicensed Printing. Of the class 
of preachers, Barrow is among the most abundant in his com- 
mand of topics of persuasion and inducement towards the 
performance of religious and moral duties ; in him no less 
than in Milton we have everywhere the tokens of an identify- 
ing mind of the highest order, 

ILLUSTRATIVE COMPARISONS AND LITERARY ART. 

41. When two remote phenomena are brought into com- 
parison by a flash of the identifying intellect, they may turn 
out to be repetitions of the same natural power working in 
different situations, as in the cases of lightning and the elec- 
trical discharge, the fall of a stone and the moon's gravitation 
to the earth. The comparison in these cases is real or sub- 
stantial. It is illustrative and instructive in no ordinary 



ILLUSTRATIONS FOR AIDING COMPREHENSION. 531 

degree, but it is more than an illustration, it is a scientific 
discovery. The two things identified are so thoroughly of a 
piece that we can go all lengths in reasoning from the one to 
the other. But there is also a useful class of comparisons 
where real identity is wanting ; the likeness being yet sufficient 
to aid us in comprehending the more obscure and remote by the 
more intelligible and familiar of the two ; as when in speaking 
of the action of supply and demand in commerce we say that 
these are constantly finding their level. Here the subjects 
compared are of quite different nature, the one belonging to 
the province of mind, and somewhat obscure, while the other 
is a physical phenomenon of a very palpable and intelligible 
sort. Illustration after this fashion is one of our devices for 
representing to the mind what is either naturally obscure or 
accidentally concealed from the view. If we can only see 
enough of the object to suggest an appropriate comparison, 
we make use of this to supply the rest. The force of simi- 
larity finds extensive scope in this department of invention. 

Illustration is particularly wanted to convey scientific 
notions and abstractions. These are often so artificial and 
abstruse that an ordinary mind has great difficulty in seizing 
them. The propagation of the pulses of sound, the pheno- 
mena of latent heat, polarity, chemical affinity, — all admit of 
elucidation by illustrative similes. Human actions, feelings, 
and thoughts, are often so concealed in their workings, that 
they cannot be represented without the assistance of material 
objects used as comparisons ; hence the great abundance 
of the resemblances struck between matter and mind. We 
speak of a clear head, a warm heart, a torrent of passion, a 
poet's fire. The comparisons brought to bear upon the com- 
plexities of social life are likewise very numerous ; in fact there 
are many social phenomena that we never conceive otherwise 
than in some matrix of material analogy. If we take for 
example the different ideas connected with social order and 
disorder, we find the language almost wholly derived from 
other things ; scarcely a phrase is literal, all is metaphorical. 
[ The vessel of the state weathers the storm, or is in danger of 
wreck ;' anarchy is described ' chaos/ ' confusion ;' the govern- 

M M 2 



532 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

ment is said to be ' shaken/ or 'stable/ or 'tottering/ law is 
' erected/ ' overthrown/ We speak of the ' life' and 'growth' 
of society; when we conceive of progress it is generally in a 
figure ; we call it 'movement/ ' development/ 'enlightenment/ 
and so forth. 

Of all existing compositions, the writings of Lord Bacon 
are perhaps the richest in illustrative comparisons of the kind 
now under discussion ; not being scientific identities, and yet 
serving in an eminent degree the purpose of assisting the 
popular intellect to embrace difficult notions. In virtue of 
this surprising power, Bacon's doctrines became clothed in 
' winged words/ According to him, science is the ' interpreta- 
tion' of nature ; a comparison that transfixes the mind with 
the idea of observing, recording, and explaining the facts of 
the world. Final causes, he says, are ' vestal virgins / they 
bear no fruit. But for the simile, it is doubtful if this notion 
would have stuck in men's minds and been the subject of 
keen controversy in the way that we have seen. His classifi- 
cation of 'Instances' or forms of experiment and proof, is 
wholly embedded in strong metaphors ; the ' experimentum 
crucis/ the leading post between two ways, has been adopted 
in every civilized tongue. Fallacies or modes of mental bias 
are with him ' idols / idols of the ' tribe/ idols of the ' den/ 
idols of the ' market-place/ idols of the ' theatre.' 

A remarkably powerful identifying intellect, working upon 
the concrete facts of nature and human life and the history 
and literature of the past, is implied in this mode of genius, of 
which Bacon is the highest instance. The susceptibility to 
certain classes of objects and impressions determines the par- 
ticular element that the resuscitating faculty must work in ; 
and in some men this susceptibility is to the concrete in 
general, rather than to the select and narrow class of the 
artistic or poetic concrete. Thus although Bacon's imagery 
sometimes rises to poetry, this is not its general character ; his 
was not a poetic sense of nature, but a broad general suscepti- 
bility, partaking more of the natural historian than of the 
poet ; by which all the objects coming before his view or pre- 
sented to his imagination took a deep hold, and by the help of 



POETIC ILLUSTRATION. 533 

his intense attraction of similarity were recalled on the slightest 
similitude. Many great writers in English literature have had 
this strong susceptibility to the sensible world at large, without 
a special poetic sense; while some have had the poetic feeling 
superadded ; these last are our greatest poets, Chaucer, Milton, 
Shakespeare. 

42. This leads me to notice the second class of illustrative 
comparisons, those serving not for intellectual comprehension, 
but for ornament, effect, or emotion. I have said that Bacon's 
comparisons rarely grew out of a poetic choice, though from 
their reach, their aptness, and their occasional picturesqueness, 
they might sometimes be quoted as a kind of poetry. His 
purpose was to enlighten, not to adorn. But similarity is the 
instrument of adding ornament and force to compositions ; 
when an idea or picture is intended to kindle emotion of any 
kind, the effect can always be heightened by adducing illus- 
trative comparisons more impressive than the original. When 
Sir Philip Sydney, to describe the moving effect of the ballad 
of Chevy Chase, says that it stirs the heart ' like the sound 
of a trumpet/ he enforces a weaker impression by one much 
stronger as well as more familiar. The following lines of 
Chaucer contain two exquisite comparisons for enriching the 
emotional effect of the subject ; it is part of his description of 
the youthful Squire. 

Embroided was he, as it were a mead, 
All full of f reshe Jloures white and rede; 
He sung and fluted gayly all the day, 
He was as fresh as is the month of May. 

To find powerful and touching comparisons in keeping 
with the original subject of the description is one of the con- 
stant endeavours of the poet, and puts his genius to the 
severest test. But the same demand is made upon the orator, 
who has also to stir up the emotions of his audience, to kindle 
their likings and dislikinsrs with a view of moving them in 
some one direction. Hence in oratory of every kind we find 
abundant use of the figures of speech growing out of com- 
parison. In panegyric, elevating similitudes are employed, in 
denunciation such as degrade. Derision and merriment grow 



534 LAW OF SIMILARITY/ 

out of low, grovelling comparisons applied to things pretending 
to be dignified and venerable. Burke's French Revolution 
teems with all the varieties of eloquent comparison, His 
' trampling law and order ' under the hoofs of the swinish mul- 
titude/ ' will be ever memorable among the figures of oratory. 

Although Shakespeare often displays the Baconian power 
of illuminative comparison, especially in moral maxims and 
commonplaces, he shines chiefly in the other class, those that 
heighten the emotional effect (while the genius of both the one 
and the other abounds in such as have no effect whatever but 
intellectual profusion). With all his susceptibility to the sensible 
and concrete of the world, to the full face of nature and life, 
he had the poetic eclecticism, and dwelt by preference upon 
the objects that inspired emotions such as an artist is wont to 
kindle up. Having perhaps the greatest intellectual reach of 
similarity that the mind of man ever attained to, his power of 
adducing illustrative similitudes, through chasms of remote- 
ness and the thickest disguise, will be a wonder and an asto- 
nishment to the latest posterity. 

43. Of the Tropes and Figures described in Rhetoric, the 
largest half turn upon comparison. The metaphor, the simile, 
the allegory — are all forms of illustration by similitude, some- 
times serving for clearness, or intellectual comprehension, at 
other times producing animation and effect. Their invention 
is due to the identifying intellect, which breaks through the 
partition caused by difference of subject to bring together 
what is similar in some one striking aspect or form. The 
literary and poetic genius of ages has accumulated a store of 
such comparisons ; many of them have passed into common 
speech to enrich the dialects of everyday life. No man has 
ever attained rank in literature, without possessing in some 
degree the power of original illustration ; and the reach or 
interval of disparity through which new similes are brought, 
makes a fair measure of the intellectual force of the individual 
mind in one of the leading characteristics of genius. The 
original fetches of Homer, of iEschylus, of Milton, and above 
all of Shakespeare (I do not pretend to exhaust the list even 
of the first-rate minds), are prodigious. How remote and yet 



THE INTELLECTUAL FINE ARTS. 635 

how grand the simile describing the descent of Apollo from 
Olympus : ' he came like night/ The identifying faculty, be 
it never so strong, would hardly suffice to bring together 
things so widely different, but for some previous preparation 
serving to approximate the nature of the two things in the 
first instance, as we have already had occasion to remark of 
some of the scientific discoveries. Night itself mast have been 
first personified in the mind to some extent, thereby reducing 
the immense disparity between the closing day and the march 
of a living personage down the mountain slopes. But with 
all due allowance for the highest susceptibility of mind to 
the poetic asj3ects of things, the power of adducing com- 
parisons from remote regions, such as we find it in the greatest 
literary compositions, is stupendous and sublime. 

FINE ART IN GENERAL. 

44. The spirit of the observations made above respecting 
Poetry applies to Fine Art in general. In the Arts we may trace 
out a scale or arrangement, beginning at the most intellectual 
and ending w T ith those that have this qualityin thelowest degree. 
At one end of the scale we find distinct examples of the purely 
intellectual law of similarity, at the other end scarcely a trace 
of this operation appears in the manner that we have been accus- 
tomed to recognise it. Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, Architec- 
ture, Decoration, and Design, are all conversant with some of 
the higher intellectual elements : Poetry with speech and the 
pictorial as represented by speech, the others with visual forms 
and appearances of various kinds. In stirring up and repro- 
ducing on fit occasions the materials of those arts, the 
associating forces of Contiguity and Similarity are extensively 
brought into play. As to Contiguity this is obvious enough ; 
as regards Similarity it may be easily shown. A painter in 
composing a picture must in the last resort choose the com- 
ponent parts according to their artistic keeping with one 
another : but in recalling from the past a number of objects 
in order to try their effect, he will be greatly assisted by a 
powerful identifying faculty. For we may suppose him to 



536 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

have in his view some one plan of a background, which hack- 
ground, however, although containing the main features, does 
not satisfy his artistic sense. By the attraction of likeness, 
this part, unsuitable in itself, may recal others resembling and 
yet greatly differing, and in the array brought up by a power- 
ful intellect working upon a large foregone experience, one may 
be presented exactly fitting the picture. There may be nothing 
artistic in the suggestion of the different views; nevertheless, 
it is only an artist that can make the proper choice. As in 
poetry, so in painting, in sculpture, in architecture, decoration, 
and design, there may be a rich intellectual storage and repro- 
duction of the material, apart from the aesthetic feeling, but by 
this feeling the artist must be guided in the use that he makes 
of the suggestions of the intellect. In all the Arts, examples 
may be found of rich profusion of unselected matter ; the 
authors mistaking a strong recollection and revival of natural 
scenery and pictorial elements in general, for the artistic 
harmonizing of the material ; still an Artist in the class we 
are now discussing cannot attain the highest greatness without 
some intellectual source of suggestions over and above his 
artistic faculty. The intervention of high intellect in Art 
seems to have reached a climax in Michael Angelo; and the 
limits of human nature forbid us to suppose that he could at 
the same time put forth the power of delicately adjusting the 
parts of his compositions so as to yield the graces and charms 
that constitute the true distinction, the essence of Art. 

45. When we pass to the second class of Arts, we find 
intellect dying away and giving place to the genuine artistic 
stimulus in its purity. Music is the most conspicuous member 
of the group, and might be taken as representing the whole : 
the others are, spoken music or Eloquence, Dramatic action 
and pantomime, the graces of personal Demeanour and dis- 
play, and the Dance. In these Arts the suggestions of intel- 
lectual similarity can hardly be said to occur. Undoubtedly, 
we may by .similarity, as already said, identify a common 
character in different airs and harmonies; and, through the 
presence of any one, others may be recalled to the mind of a 
composer, and may serve him as hints and aids in a new com- 



VALUE OF THE INTELLECT IN ART. 537 

position. In such circumstances, I can conceive the operation 
of a vigorous identifying faculty as enlarging a musician's 
resources, or making more readily available to him the ex- 
amples that have previously impressed themselves on his 
mind. But this process of imitating and compiling does not 
fairly exemplify the workings of artistic creativeness. The 
author of a truly original melody relies upon no such intel- 
lectual assistance. By the spontaneous gushings of his mind 
he flows out into song, and by the guidance of a delicate sense 
he tunes himself to melody. Other men may imitate and 
combine such primitive originals in a variety of compositions, 
but the knowing ear can always detect the work of compi- 
lation. Intellect may originate Science, but not Art. It might 
be shown, I believe, that the fountain of artistic originality 
in such instances as music and dramatic action is to be 
sought in the emotional and spontaneous workings of the 
organs; while in the compositions of the former class these 
workings conspire with the sensuous intellect ; and in all alike 
a keen aesthetic sensibility is indispensable. 

I may here refer to what is a common subject of remark, 
that great musicians and actors, not to speak of opera dancers, 
have often a very low order of intellect, as measured by the 
ordinary tests. So in the charms and graces of society, which 
is a species of fine art, intellect may contribute nothing. In 
assisting the less gifted temperaments to take on the charm 
native to the others, it may operate with good effect; for this 
is done by acquisition and compilation, where the intellectual 
forces always work to advantage. Moreover, in Art, effects 
can often be reduced to rule, and the comprehending and 
following out of rules is an affair of the intelligence. In 
musical compositions there are rules as to harmony, which 
any one might act upon; in elocution much can be done by 
merely understanding the directions of an instructor, but to 
stupidity all such directions are nugatory. Thus it is that in 
the diffusion and extension of the least intellectual of the fine 
arts, recourse may be had to an instrumentality that would 
never suffice for their creation. It is a remarkable fact in 
history, that the most highly gifted people of antiquity, in all 



538 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

that regarded pure intelligence, had no apparent originality 
in music; but in their appreciation of its effects they made 
copious use of the Lydian and Phrygian melodies, and pushed 
them forward into alliance with meaning in their lyric and 
dramatic poetry. 

SIMILARITY IN ACQUISITION AND MEMORY. 

46. It now remains to show how the force of reinstate- 
ment by similarity can operate in carrying forward the work 
of Acquisition. We have seen that the associating principle 
of Contiguity must needs be the groundwork of Acquisition in 
general; but when any new train can bring up from the past 
some nearly similar train, the labour of a separate acquire- 
ment is thereby saved, the points of difference between the 
new and the old are all that is left for Contiguity to build up 
in the mental system. When a workman is to be taught a 
new operation in his art, there will necessarily be, along with 
certain matters of novelty, a large amount of identity with 
his already acquired habits; hence in order to master the 
operation, he will require to repeat it just as often as will suffice 
for fixing all those new steps and combinations by the plastic 
adhesiveness of Contiguity. A professed dancer learning a 
new dance, is in a very different predicament from a beginner 
in the art. A musician learning a new piece, actually finds 
that nineteen-twentieths of all the sequences to be acquired 
have been already formed through his previous education. A 
naturalist reads the description of a newly discovered animal ; 
he possesses already, in his mind, the characters of the known 
animals most nearly approaching to it; and, if he merely give 
sufficient time and attention for fastening the features that 
are absolutely new to him, he carries away and retains the 
whole. The judge in listening to a law -pleading hears little 
that is absolutely new; if he keeps that little in his memory, 
he stores up the whole case. When we read a book, on a 
subject already familiar to us, we can reproduce the entire 
work, at the expense of labour requisite to remember the 
additions it makes to our previous stock of knowledge. So 
in Fine Art; an architect, a painter, or a poet, can easily carry 



SCIENTIFIC ACQUISITION. 539 

away with them the total impression of a building, a picture, 
or a poem ; for instead of being acquisitions de novo, they are 
merely variations of effects already engrained on the artist's 
recollection. 

To whatever extent one thing is the repetition of another, 
the cost of contiguous acquisition is saved. But it is necessary 
that the repetition or identity should be perceived ; in other 
words, the new lesson must reinstate, by the force of similarity, 
all the previous trains that in any way correspond with it. 
An old acquirement containing many steps in common with a 
lesson in hand, will be of no use unless it is recalled ; should 
the disagreeing points be so marked as to cloud the resem- 
blance and stifle the identifying action, nothing is gained by 
the agreement. It consequently happens that a mind feeble 
as regards the restoring force of similarity, misses the help 
that past acquirements could often bring to bear upon present 
effects ; whereas a remarkable energy of recal will make 
everything available that contains the smallest trace of com- 
mon matter. 

47. To take a few examples from Science. The subject 
matter of Geometry embodies a few fundamental notions and 
processes. A definition, an axiom, a postulate, a proposition, 
whether theorem or problem, a chain of demonstration, are to 
the beginner things absolutely new. They must be fixed by 
the plastic power of Contiguity, and time and concentration 
must be allowed for the purpose. But in a good head, one or 
two examples of each strongly imprinted will make all the 
rest easy ; the method or character of the devices will be seen 
through and acquired, and in every new case the mind will 
fall back upon the old ones for the common element, and con- 
centrate attention on the points of difference solely. When, 
after going over a few definitions, the mind gets impressed 
with the form and peculiarity of a definition, there is little to 
acquire in the rest ; a slight substitution serves to make a new 
one out of an old ; the definition of a square is easily changed 
to suit a rectangle. So with an axiom : the first is the most 
laborious to acquire; every subsequent one is easier than the 
preceding. When we come to the propositions, there is a 



540 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

very great deal of novelty at first ; the whole scheme and 
management of a theorem or problem — the formality in the 
statement, and in the order of the proof — are things utterly 
strange to the young beginner ; to acquire a simple proposition 
is a heavy strain upon his adhesiveness for abstract and repre- 
sentative forms. When this first acquisition is made, it can 
be turned to account in every succeeding proposition, provided 
the operation of similarity is not obstructed by the differences 
that encumber the new cases. Indeed, if each step in the 
machinery of Geometry were, without much waste of time, 
firmly learned on the first encounter, and if the reviving power 
of similarity for this class of things were unfailing, one's pro- 
gress through Euclid would be a race, such as is recorded of 
Pascal and Newton. But to the generality of minds identities 
in geometrical reasoning are hard to perceive; a difference in 
collaterals utterly extinguishes the sense of a similarity in 
substance, and every new proposition is a fresh labour, as if 
nothing like it had been gone through before. 

What is true of Geometry holds in all the sciences. There 
is in each one a vast deal of repetition both of the facts, or 
subject-matter, and of the formal machinery, although with 
great differences of mode and circumstance. The law of 
gravitation runs through all Astronomy; and in the deepest 
calculations of the celestial movements the same mathematical 
devices are constantly reproduced in new complications. A 
mind that can seize a calculation once for all, and trace it out 
in the thickest envelope of diversity, will speedily pass through 
the intricacies of this vast subject, or of any other abstract 
science. Along with the grasp of similarity that can suffice 
to trace out identities hitherto passed over by all former minds 
working in the same sphere, it is to be presumed that the more 
ordinary resemblances will be easy to strike ; hence an original 
mind in science is also distinguished for the rapidity of its 
course along the track of the already known. Much of the acqui- 
sitions of a strong intellect is in reality the re-discovery of 
what is already known ; such an intellect catches the identities 
of abstraction, classification, induction, deductive application, 
and demonstrative reasoning, even before they are pointed 



BUSINESS ACQUISITION. 541 

out by the master. He will make but a poor mathematician 
that needs to refer to his book for the demonstration of every 
successive theorem. With all branches of Physics, with 
Chemistry and Physiology, the very same remarks will apply. 
It is the nature of an advanced science to contain innumer- 
able identifications summed up in its definitions and general 
laws ; it was by a vigorous similarity that these were first 
formed ; by the same power they are rapidly acquired. 

So in the more concrete sciences of the Natural History 
group. In Zoology, Botany, Mineralogy, Geology, there has 
been accumulated a fund of identities in the classifications 
made of the objects of each. To acquire these classifications 
the learner must himself feel the similarity among the indi- 
viduals ; and if his mind is of that powerful kind that can 
trace many of the likenesses by its own unassisted force, he will 
speedily string together all the groups that have been formed 
by others. It is of consequence to a botanist looking to a 
new plant that he shall be able to recal at once whatever other 
plants he had known that in any way resemble it ; he will in 
this way both determine its true class, and stamp it with ease, 
upon his memory. 

48. In all the acquisitions of Business, no less than of 
Science, similarity will likewise bear an important part. If 
an apprentice at the Law has that deep and subtle identifying 
power that sees in every new case whatever similarity there is 
in it to some previous one, he saves half his labour ; his mind 
breaks in upon the old track, and on that builds up the new 
recollection to the extent of the likeness. It is possible to lay 
under contribution in this way matters quite different from 
the subject in hand ; to clench the technicalities of the law 
we may go back upon recollections out of all sciences and arts, 
illustrating the subject as it were to one's self. The mind of 
Lord Bacon could see in anything that presented itself multi- 
farious analogies to things the most remote ; these analogies 
he could produce to his readers to facilitate their conception 
of his meaning, and by the same power he could shorten his 
own labour and study. When a clever person surprises us by 
instantaneously comprehending and firmly retaining some new 



542 LAW OF SIMILARITY. 

method of procedure, we may be quite sure that it has taken 
hold of him by resuscitating something analogous out of the 
storehouses of his past experience ; whenever this easy com- 
prehension and this permanent retention form part of the 
mental character, and show themselves in a wide range of 
subjects, a vigorous identifying faculty certainly lies at the 
bottom. 

49. The case of the Artistic mind presents no essential 
difference. The storing up of impressions of objects of art is 
easiest when the identifying power is so strong as to bring up 
on every occasion whatever resembles the object before the 
view. That a likeness should exist between something we are 
at present looking at or listening to, and some past impres- 
sions of the eye or the ear, and that that likeness should not 
be felt, is a misfortune, a loss in every way, and for this reason 
among others, that to impress the new object on the memory 
we require as much repetition and pains as if nothing of the 
kind had ever been experienced before. In reading a poem 
the memory is assisted to remember it by all the similarities 
of thought, of imagery, of language, of metre and rhythm, 
that it is able to evoke from the traces of former readings and 
recollections. In a mind very keen and susceptible on all 
these poetic elements, and having the power of similarity 
highly manifested, almost every touch will rouse up something 
from the past that has a certain degree of resemblance, and 
that something will be an already formed recollection to eke 
out the retentiveness of the new strain. The more one's acqui- 
sitions advance, the greater the scope of this work of fitting 
old cloth into new garments ; but previous acquisition is only 
of avail according as the stroke of resuscitation is good, and 
able to pierce the disguises of diversity and altered form that 
may attach to the most resembling of all our past examples. 

The contiguous retentiveness of the mind is put to the 
fullest test only by entire and absolute novelty, a thing that 
is more and more rare as one grows older. In learning lan- 
guages, for example, we have less to acquire with every new 
individual language. Latin prepares for French, Italian, 
Spanish, &c.; German for Dutch; Sanscrit for Hindostanee. 









THE MEMORY AIDED BY SIMILARITY. 543 

The generalizations of philologists in tracing common roots 
through all the Indo-European tongues, greatly diminish the 
number of original ties that contiguity has to fix. All dis- 
coveries of generalization have this effect; and if an individual 
learner can see likenesses in addition to what have been gene- 
rally promulgated, his labour is shortened by strokes of power 
peculiar to himself. 

50. The Historical Memory might furnish good examples 
of the intervention of Similarity in making up the coherent 
tissue of recollected events. In the transactions of the world, 
great and small, there is so much of repetition, that a new 
history is in reality a various reading of some old one ; not to 
mention how much each nation repeats itself through its 
successive epochs. To a dull mind a great deal of this repeti- 
tion is lost for all purposes, the aid to memory among the 
rest ; but a keen-sighted attraction for every vestige of recur- 
ring likeness enables another person to retain large masses of 
narrative at a small expense of adhesive acquisition. Cam- 
paign suggests campaign, and one battle another; an intrigue, 
a negociation, a career of ambition, a conquest, a revolution, 
are no new things to the student gone some way in history ; 
certain minor features, some of the proportions and circum- 
stantials, are special to the case in hand, and these must be 
fixed in the memory by pure contiguity. No man could recite 
a narrative of any sort from a single reading or hearing, if it 
were all new to him ; to tell a story an hour after getting it 
from another party would be impossible but for our possessing 
already among our stored recollections more than nineteen- 
twentieths of all the adhesions that enter into it. 



544 



CHAPTER III. 
COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

I. TTITHERTO we have restricted our attention to single 
J— L threads or invisible links of association, whether of 
contiguity or similarity. It remains for us yet to consider the 
case where several threads, or a plurality of links or bonds of 
connexion, concur in reviving some previous thought or 
mental state. No new principle is introduced here ; we have 
merely to note, what seems an almost unavoidable effect of 
the combined action, that the reinstatement is thereby made 
more easy and certain. Associations that are individually too 
weak to operate the revival of a past idea may succeed by 
acting together ; and there is thus opened up to our view a 
means of aiding our recollection or invention when the 
one thread in hand is too feeble to effect a desired recal. It 
happens, in fact, that in a very large number of our mental 
transitions a multiple bond of association is at work, and our 
subject therefore demands that we should follow out the 
exposition under this new view. 

The combinations may be made up of contiguities alone, 
of similarities alone, or of contiguity and similarity mixed. 
Moreover, we shall find that there is a suggesting power in 
Emotion and in Volition, and that this may conspire with the 
proper intellectual forces, and may either assist or obstruct 
their operation. In the reviving of a past image or idea, it is 
never an unimportant circumstance that the revival gratifies 
a favourite emotion or is strongly willed in the pursuit of an 
end. We must endeavour to appreciate as far as we are able 
the influence of these extra-intellectual energies within the 
sphere of intellect ; but as they would rarely suffice for 
the reproduction of thought if acting apart and alone, we are 



COMPOSITE CONJUNCTIONS. 545 

led to look at them chiefly as modifying the effects of the 
proper intellectual forces, or as combining elements in the 
composition of associations. 

The general law may be stated as follows : — 

Past actions, sensations, thoughts, or emotions are re- 
called more easily, when associated either through 
contiguity or similarity, with more than one present 
object or impression. 

COAIPOSITION OF CONTIGUITIES. 

2. Commencing with the case where a plurality of links of 
contiguous association is concerned in the revival, there 
is a wide scope for illustration. Instances might be cited 
under all the heads of the first chapter of the present Book ; 
but a less profuse selection will suffice. There will, however, 
be a gain in clearness by taking Conjunctions and Successions 
separately. 

Conjunctions. — For a simple example of a compound 
conjunction, we may suppose a person smelling a liquid and 
identifying the smell as something felt before, but unable to 
recal to mind the material causing it. Here the bond between 
an odour and the odorous substance is too feeble for re- 
producing the idea and name of the substance. Suppose 
farther that the person could taste the liquid without feeling 
the odour, and that in the taste he could recognise a former 
taste, but could not remember the thing. If in these circum- 
stances the concurrence of the two present sensations of taste 
and smell brought the substance to the recollection, we should 
have a true instance of composite association. If one of the 
two links is fully equal to the restoring effect, there is no clear 
case under the present law ; in order to constitute a proper 
example each should be insufficient when acting singly.* There 



* If, by the assistance of the second bond, the revised idea were more 
vividly or forcibly brought forward, we should have a true example of 
compound association, although a restoration was possible through the first 
bond acting alone. 

N N 



516 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

(can I think be little doubt as to the fact that such revivals 
occur, although we might conceive it otherwise. It would be 
nothing intrinsically improbable that two links of connexion 
inadequate separately, should be inadequate jointly; just as no 
amount of water at the temperature of 40° is able to yield 
one spoonful at 45°. Combination does not in all cases make 
strength. Ten thousand commonplace intellects would not 
make one genius, under any system of co-operation. The 
multiplication of unaided eyes could never equal the vision of 
one person with a telescope or microscope. 

We have seen that the complex wholes that surround us 
in the world are held together in the recollection by the 
adhesive force of Contiguity ; such objects as a tree, a human 
figure, a scene in nature, cannot continue in the mind or be 
revived as ideas until frequent repetition has made all the 
parts coherent. After the requisite iteration a complex object, 
such as a rural village, may be revived by the presence of a 
single portion of it, as some street, or building, or marked 
locality. But if the village is one not well known to a person, 
that is, if the notion of it is not very firmly aggregated in the 
mind, the traveller just entering may not be liable to identify 
it by the first thing that strikes him ; he may require to go 
on till several other objects come in view, when probably their 
joint impression will be able to bring up the whole, in other 
words, will remind him what village he is now entering, so that 
he can tell the name and all the particulars that enter into 
his recollection of it. 

So in regarding objects as concretes, or combinations of 
many distinct qualities, — an orange, for example, affects all 
the senses, — there is a fixing process which makes the dif- 
ferent sensations hold together in one complex idea. Here too 
there is room for the joint action of associating links in recall- 
ing an image to the mind. I have already imagined a case 
of this description, where the united action of smell and taste 
was supposed to revive the idea of the conci^ete object causing 
them, either being of itself insufficient for the purpose. 

3. It is, however, when we go beyond the case of isolated 
objects to the still greater aggregations made up by the rela- 



LINKS OF LOCALITY AND PEESON. 547 

tions of things to one another, that we can reap examples of 
multiple association in the greatest abundance. In the con- 
nexions of objects with places or locality, with persons, with 
uses, and with all the properties that may belong to them, we 
see numberless occasions for the working of the composite link 
in effecting the recaL 

When things have a fixed locality, \hey become associated 
in the mind with that locality, or with a number of companion 
objects or appearances. This is one of the means of their 
restoration to the mind in idea. The sight or remembrance 
of a harbour recals the shipping ; the recollection of a building 
brings up the things that we know it to contain. Conversely, 
an object that has a fixed place recals the place, as when 
St. Paul's reminds us of the neighbourhood where it stands. 
Now it not seldom happens that we desire to recal a place or 
an object by this link of connexion but are unable to do so ; a 
second connexion of this or some other kind may then come to 
the rescue. 

Thus, to take the case of searching for things lost. When 
we do not know where to find a thing, although we ourselves 
have put it in its place or seen it there, the adhesion of place 
is by that circumstance declared to be feeble. We then run 
over other links of association ; we get upon the time when 
we last saw it, the work we were engaged in, or any fact that 
would along with the lost object have an association with the 
forgotten place, and we may thus through a multiplicity of 
feeble connexions attain a force of recal equal to one strong 
adhesion. 

The connexions with persons frequently yield an assisting 
link in difficult recollection. Objects become associated with 
their owners, their makers, inventors, all persons concerned in 
their use, or frequenting their locality. When we are unable 
to recover a thing by the adhesion between it and other in- 
animate accompaniments, the suggestion of a personal con- 
nexion will often make up what is wanting in reviving 
efficacy. Thus in my endeavour to recollect an array of 
objects in some museum, there are some that have com- 
pletely escaped me ; the association of these with their place 

N N 2 



548 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

in the building and with the adjoining objects which are 
present to my mind is not enough ; but when I chance to 
recal the donor, the collector, or maker, along with these other 
adjuncts, the vanished individuals will probably reappear. 

It occurs likewise that things are recalled by plurality of 
association with persons, each link being too weak alone, but 
made powerful by union. I meet some one in the street, and 
make an ineffectual attempt to remember where I last saw 
the same person: by and by some one else occurs to me, who 
was present in the same place. Perhaps, if I had merely this 
last person in my view, I should have been as little able to 
revive the place as with the first alone; whereas with the two 
I have no longer any difficulty. 

The converse operation of remembering a person by two 
or more different connexions is still more frequently exem- 
plified. A human being standing alone is a sufficiently many- 
sided object to be open to revival through a multiplex bond. 
Looking upon it, either as an aggregate of many parts, or as 
a concrete of many qualities, the remark holds to a very great 
degree. The particulars of a personal description are very nume- 
rous, and it often requires many of them to be cited, in order 
to bring to mind an individual very well known to us. More- 
over, the external relations of human beings surpass in variety 
those of other objects. A person is associated with a name; with 
locality, habitation, and places of resort; with blood and lineage, 
a very powerful mental tie in consequence of the strength 
of the family feelings ; with associates and friends ; with occu- 
pation, pursuits, amusements; with property and possessions; 
with rank and position ; with the many attributes that make 
up character and reputation ; with a particular age ; with the 
time they have lived in; with the vicissitudes and incidents 
that mark the course of their life. Now, in recalling a person 
previously known, any one or more of these connexions may 
serve us; and when a present link is insufficient, others 
require to be added. If we were endeavouring to recover 
the historical personages of a given time, the age of Pericles, 
for example, there would be a certain strength of bond 



ASSOCIATIONS WITH USES. 549 

between each of them and the idea of the time, namely, the 
fifth century before Christ. In the case of some, this link 
might be strong enough of itself; with others a second 
link might be requisite, as for example, their profession. 
With the idea of a sculptor entering into the composition, 
we should recal Phidias, with a painter Praxiteles, with a 
philosopher Anaxagoras. Our historical memory is very often 
helped after this fashion. 

Persons are brought more or less frequently before our 
view, and are made links in our trains of thought, according 
as we are liable to encounter the various accompaniments of 
their life. If we pass every day by a particular dwelling the 
tenant comes readily to mind; if in addition we have to 
think frequently of the same individual's calling, as the chief 
of some business department which we have many dealings with, 
such an one will engross a large share of our thinking currents 
and permanent regards. 

4. The connexion of things with uses is a source of mul- 
tiple bonds. A tool, a building, the materials of food, cloth- 
ing, &c, everything that comes into the market as a useful 
commodity, an army, or a fleet, — all such things have besides 
their aj3pearance, locality, ownership, &c, a distinct end to 
serve, whence arises a powerful bond of association. I am 
unable to remember the objects that I have seen in a certain 
shop, by virtue solely of their association with the shop, and 
with contiguous things that I do remember, one course open 
to me would be to run over in my mind a list of utilities to be 
answered, in which list I should bring up one or more uses of 
the forgotten things, and this new bond co-operating would 
be sure to recover some of those from their oblivious con- 
dition. To carry away a full recollection of the contents of a 
manufactory that I have visited, I should find it necessary to 
aid the association of contiguity of place and succession, with 
the various ends or utilities that were to be supplied. In 
recalling the details of a printing-office that I have been 
seeing, I forget the operation of wetting the paper; I chance, 
however, to get into my hand a newly printed sheet, and the 



550 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

wetness adds its suggesting power to the other contiguities, 
and I bring to mind the manual operation for imparting 
the effect. 

In the natural sciences, the material objects of the world 
are looked upon as having many properties, useful or not ; 
these are ascertained by observation and experiment, and are 
recorded as part of the description of the several substances. 
In this way everything suffers an ideal expansion or aggran- 
disement in the mind ; the connexions of things, or the threads 
that give us our hold of them, are multiplied. The substance, 
silica, in the mind of a naturalist, has a vast range of associa- 
tions in consequence of the many properties entering into his 
notion of it. These various links tend to bring the substance 
repeatedly before the mind ; sometimes one link is sufficiently 
powerful, for example, the recollection of a given degree of 
hardness ; at other times the material is recovered by double 
or triple connexions, as the ideas of an oxide, of insolubility, 
and of a six-sided crystallization. The scientific man's 
memory is constantly liable to be aided by the multiplication 
of bonds individually too feeble to bring about the recollection 
of a forgotten object. In invention, as in the search for a 
device to answer some new end, the mind must go over cata- 
logues of objects according to many kinds of contiguity, 
including the most casual connexions, in order to bring forward 
a large field for selection. 

5. Successio7is. I have dwelt at length, in a previous 
chapter, on the contiguous association of successions of various 
kinds. Here, too, in the case of imperfect adhesion, the re- 
covery may be due to a composite action. I have witnessed a 
series of events, and these are in consequence associated in my 
mind. In endeavouring to recal the series from the com- 
mencement, a link fails, and the recovery is arrested until 
some other association, such as place, or person, contribute a 
thread in aid of the defective link. Very often, indeed, the 
auxiliary bond is of itself strong enough to effect a revival 
single-handed ; this would not be an instance of the principle 
now under consideration. 

There is one succession that contains the whole of our past 



AIDS TO THE LINK OF ORDER IN TIME. 551 

experience, that is the Order of Time, or the sequence of 
events in each one's own history. If all the minutise of this 
succession were to cohere perfectly in the mind, everything 
that we have ever done, seen, or been cognizant of, could be 
recovered by means of it. But, although all the larger trans- 
actions and the more impressive scenes of our personal history 
are linked in this order with a sufficient firmness, yet for 
smaller incidents the bond is too weak. I cannot remember 
fully my yesterday's train of thoughts ; nor repeat verbatim 
an address of five minutes' length, whether spoken or heard. 
Things related in the order of time are strictly speaking 
experienced only once, and we almost always require 
repetition to fix any mental train. It constantly happens 
therefore that we are in search of some reinforcing connexion 
to help us in recovering the stream of events as they occurred 
in the order of time. We seek for other conjunctions and 
successions to enable us to recommence after every break. 

Experience teaches us that the only way of making up a 
defective adhesion is to compass in our minds some other 
connexion, or to get at the missing object through a different 
door. The inability to recollect the next occurring particular 
of a train that we are in want of stimulates a great effort of 
volition, and the true course for the mind to take is to get 
upon some other chain or stream that is likely to cross the 
line of the first near the break. We are probably unable to 
say which succession will answer best for this end, and we 
therefore try several, one after the other. Sometimes by 
sticking with energy upon the last link remembered, the 
mental force may be exalted by excitement, and by this 
means the recovery may take place. It is, however, difficult 
to say whether this exalting effect of excitement can ever 
count for much. The other method, though slow and pro- 
tracted, is the more likely. If I wish to remember all the 
incidents of a long and eventful day, I must be indebted in a 
very great degree to composite connexions. 

At every moment of life each person stands immersed in a 
complicated scene, and each object of this scene may become 
a starting point for a train of recollections. All the internal 



552 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION". 

feelings of the body ; everything that surrounds us and strikes 
the eye, ear, touch, taste, or smell ; all the ideas, emotions, 
and purposes occupying the mind ; — these form so many 
beginnings of trains of association passing far away in the 
remotest regions of recollection and thought ; and we have it 
in our power to stop and change the direction as often as we 
please. From some one of these present things we must com- 
mence our outgoings towards the absent and the distant, 
whether treading in single routes, or using the aid that com- 
posite action can bestow. 

6. Language. — The recal of names by things and of things 
by names give in both cases occasion for bringing in additional 
links to aid a feeble tie. When we have forgotten the name 
of a person or of an object, we are under the necessity 
of referring back to the situation and circumstances where we 
have heard the name to see if any other bond of connexion 
will spring up. Very often we are unable at the time to 
recover the lost sound by any means ; but a short time after- 
wards an auxiliary circumstance crosses the view, and the 
recollection strikes us of its own accord. 

Many of our recollections, thoughts, conceptions and 
imaginings are an inextricable mixture of language and visible 
pictures. The notions that we acquire through oral instruction 
or from books are made up in part by the subject matter 
purely, and in part by the phraseology that conveyed it. Thus 
my recollection of a portion of history is made up of the train 
of words and the train of historical facts and scenes as I might 
have seen them with my own eyes. So in many sciences, 
there is a combination of visible or tangible notions with terms 
or language. Geometry is a compound of visible diagrams 
with the language of definitions, axioms, and demonstrations. 
Now in all these cases recollection may turn either on the 
associations of words, or on those of visible and other concep- 
tions, or on a compound of both. If I listen to a geographical 
description, there is in the first place a train of words dropping 
on my ear; and by virtue of a perfect verbal cohesion I 
might recal the whole description and recite it to another 
party. In the second place, there is a series of views of 



MULTIPLICATION OF POINTS OF LIKENESS. 553 

objects, of mountain, river, plain, and forest, which I picture 
in my mind and retain independently of the language used to 
suggest them. Were my pictorial adhesion strong enough I 
could recal the whole of the features in the order that I was 
made to conceive them and leave aside the language. The 
common case, however, is that the recollection is made out 
of a union of both the threads of cohesion ; the pictorial train 
is assisted by the verbal, and the verbal by the pictorial as 
may be required. 

COMPOSITION OF SIMILAEITIES. 

7. The effect of the multiplication of points of likeness in 
securing the revival of a past object is liable to no uncertainty. 
It is only an extension of the principle maintained all through 
the discussion of the law of similarity, that the greater the 
similitude and the more numerous the points of resemblance, 
the surer is the stroke of recal. If I meet a person very like 
some one else I have formerly known, the probability of my 
recalling this last person to view is increased, if the likeness 
in face and feature is combined with similarity of dress, 
of speech, of gait, or of any still more extraneous points, such 
as occupation, or history. Increase of resemblance extensively, 
that is by outward connexions, has the same power as increase 
of resemblance intensively, in rendering the restoration of the 
past more certain. It might admit of a doubt whether four 
faint links of contiguous adhesion would be equal to one strong, 
but it would be against our whole experience of the workings 
of similarity to doubt the utility of multiplying faint resem- 
blances when there was no one sufficiently powerful to effect 
the revival. At the same time we must admit that much 
more is contributed to the chances of reinstatement by inten- 
sifying one point of likeness than by adding new ones of a 
faint character. By raising some single feature almost up to 
the point of identity we should do more good than could be 
done by scattering faint and detached likenesses over the 
picture. This, however, is not always in our power ; and we 
are fain to acknowledge that when the similarity in any one 
particular is too feeble to suggest the resembling past, the 



B54< COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

existence of a plurality of weak resemblances will be the 
equivalent of a single stronger one. 

On this view, I might exemplify the workings of com- 
posite similarities from the various classes of examples gone 
over in the preceding chapter. In all very complicated con- 
junctions, as, for example, a landscape, there may be a 
multiplication of likenesses unable to strike singly, but by 
their concurrence suggesting a parallel scene. Hence, in en- 
deavouring to gain from the past a scene resembling some one 
present, we may proceed, as in Contiguity, by hunting out 
new collaterals for the chance of increasing the amount of 
similitude and with that the attractive power of the present 
for the absent. If I am endeavouring to recal to mind some 
historic parallel to a present political situation, supposing one 
to exist and to have been at some former time impressed on 
my mind, there may be a want of any single salient likeness, 
such as we admit to be the most effective medium of rein- 
statement, and I must therefore go over in my mind all 
the minute features of the present to enhance in this way 
the force of the attraction of similitude for the forgotten 
parallel. 

8. The case noticed at the conclusion of the preceding head, 
namely, the combination of language with subject-matter in 
a mixed recollection, is favourable to the occurrence of com- 
pound similarity. If an orator has before his mind a certain 
subject, the conduct of an individual, for example, which he 
wishes to denounce by a cutting simile, his invention may be 
aided by some similarity in the phrases descriptive of the case 
as well as in the features of the case itself. If one who has at a 
former time read the play of CEdipus, now commences to read 
Lear, the similarity is not at first apparent, but long before 
the conclusion there will be a sufficient accumulation of 
features of similitude, in dramatic situation and in language, 
to bring OEdipus to mind without any very powerful stretch of 
intellectual force. So in scientific invention; a fact described 
in language has a double power of suggestion; and if, by good 
luck, both the fact and the description have a resemblance 



INVENTION BECOMING MEMORY. 555 

to some other fact, and to the language that accompanied 
this other when formerly present to the mind, there is so 
much the more chance of the revival taking place. 

MIXED CONTIGUITY AND SIMILARITY. 

9. Under this head several important groups of instances 
might be noted. 

If any one in describing a storm bring in the phrase ' a 
war of elements/ the metaphor has been brought to mind 
partly by similitude, but partly also by contiguity, seeing that 
the comparison has already been used in conjunction with the 
picture of a storm. The person that first used the phrase 
came upon it by similarity; he that used it next had con- 
tiguity to assist him; and after frequent usage the bond of 
contiguity might come to be so well confirmed, that the force 
of similarity is at last entirely superseded. In this way many 
things that were originally strokes of genius end in being 
efforts of mere adhesive recollection; while, for a time pre- 
vious to this final consummation, a mixed effort of the two 
suggesting forces is displayed. Hence Johnson's remark on 
the poet Ogilvie, that his poem contained what was once 
imagination, but in him had come to be memory.* 

In all regions of intellectual exertion, in industry, science, 
art, literature, there is a kind of ability displayed in taking 
up great and original ideas and combinations, before they 
have been made easy by iteration. Minds unable for the 
highest efforts of origination may yet be equal to this second 
degree of genius, wherein a considerable force of similarity 



* ' On Tuesday the 5th July (1763), I again visited Johnson. He told 
me he had now looked into the poems of a pretty voluminous writer, Mr. 
(now Dr.) John Ogilvie, one of the Presbyterian ministers of Scotland, 
which had lately come out, but could find nothing in them. 
' Boswell. ' Is there not imagination in them, Sir ?' 
' Johnson. 'Why, Sir, there is in them, what was imagination, but it- 
is no more imagination in Mm, than sound is sound in the echo. And his 
diction, too, is not his own. We have long ago seen white-robed innocence, 
and Jlower-besjpangled meads." 



556 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

is assisted by a small thread of contiguity. To master a large 
multitude of the discoveries of identification, a power of simi- 
larity somewhat short of the original force that gave birth to 
them is aided by the contiguous bond that has grown up during 
the few repetitions of each that there has been opportunity for 
making. 

10. A second case is furnished when a similarity is struck 
for the first time in circumstances that brought the absent 
object into near proximity in some contiguous train. Thus a 
poet falls upon a beautiful metaphor while dwelling in the 
region or neighbourhood where the material of the simile 
occurs. In the country, rural comparisons are most easily 
made, on ship-board nautical metaphors are naturally abun- 
dant. There is a real effort of similarity in giving birth to 
new comparisons, but the things compared may chance to 
stand so near that notwithstanding the faintness or disguise 
the embrace of identity comes on. 

If we chance to be studying by turns two different sciences 
that throw much light on each other, we are in a good way 
for easily deriving the benefit of the comparison. Should we 
know the most likely source of fertile similitudes for some 
difficult problem, we naturally keep near that source in order 
that we may be struck with the faintest gleam of likeness 
through the help of proximity. A historian of the ancient 
republics keeps his mind familiar with all the living instances 
of the republican system, as well as with those of the middle 
ages that have been fully recorded. At a time when physical 
science is largely indebted to mathematical handling as during 
the age of Newton, the scientific man spends half his time in 
mathematical studies. In such cases, it is not safe to trust to 
an acquisition of old date, however pertinacious the mind may 
be in retaining the subject in question. The great discoveries 
of identification that astonish the world and open up new 
vistas of knowledge, may have often required a help from the 
accidental proximity of the things made to flash together. 
For illustration's sake, we might suppose Newton in the 
act of meditating upon the planetary attraction, at the time 



RECOLLECTIONS GOVERNED BY EMOTION. 557 

that the celebrated apple fell to the ground before his eyes ; 
a proximity so very close would powerfully aid in bringing on 
the stroke of identification. 



THE ELEMENT OF EMOTION. 

ii. We have already seen under Contiguity that associa- 
tions grow up between objects and emotional states, whereby 
the one can recal the other, — the object reviving the emotion, 
and the emotion the object. Anything, for example, that has 
been strongly associated with a disgust, is apt to recal the 
feeling at a future time. 

This link may now be noted as entering into composite 
associations. In remembering some past object that has been 
linked in the mind with a certain emotion, the presence of the 
emotion will contribute to the recal. Although perhaps insuf- 
ficient of itself this bond will often be found co-operating with 
others to effect the revival of an old recollection. While 
luxuriating in a state of agreeable warmth, we are very easily 
reminded of former situations and circumstances that have 
had this accompaniment. 

When the mind is immersed in any of the special emotions, 
as Terror, Anger, Tenderness, Beauty, objects connected with 
the emotion are favoured, while all others are repelled. In 
moods of tenderness objects of affection rise by preference; 
this link co-operating with any other that may be present 
makes the restoration of such objects more certain. If the 
mind is disposed to indulge in the irascible emotion, objects of 
anger and hatred find an easy opening, while others are 
repelled even although strongly suggested by other links of 
association. Something occurs to remind a person of a good 
deed performed to him by the object of his wrath ; but the 
recollection is refused admittance. When an emotion possesses 
the mind in anything like fury, nothing that discords with it 
can find a place though ever so powerfully suggested, while 
the feeblest link of connexion is sufficient to recal circum- 
stances in harmony with the dominant state. 



558 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

1 2. Hence in minds very susceptible to emotion, the more 
purely intellectual bonds of association are continually com- 
bined and modified by connexions with feeling. The entire 
current of thought and recollection is thus impressed with a 
character derived from emotion. Where tender affection is 
indulged as a dominant feeling, the objects that rise from the 
past, no less than those engaging the attention in the present, 
are for the most part tinged with this feeling. A joyous 
temperament has its genial recollections ; melancholy opens 
the door to a totally different class. The egotist is eager for 
any suggestions that connect themselves with self, and a slight 
bond of adhesion otherwise will suffice to make these present. 
Poetic emotion gaining possession of the mind gives a select 
character to the images that recur from the past. A strong 
natural feeling of reverence accumulates a store of ideas of 
things venerable, and gives them precedence in the resurrec- 
tions of thought. 

This peculiarity has often arrested attention, and has been 
adopted as a theme both by poets and by philosophers. It is 
the character of an intellectual and cultivated nature to main- 
tain the ascendancy of the intellectual associations over the 
suggestions of emotion. This is one of the forms of the 
dominion of reason in the mind. 

When a particular emotion is excessive in the character, 
not only can we readily predict the actions, we can almost read 
the thoughts of the individual. The anecdote of Burke's 
divination of the thoughts of Goldsmith, when passing a crowd 
collected by the feats of a mountebank, can scarcely be called 
extravagant as an illustration of this point. 

INFLUENCE OF VOLITION. 

13. In many cases our recollection of the past is promoted 
by Volition ; that is, we have some purpose or end in view, 
which stimulates the activity of the system to bring about the 
recovery. I want to recal the name of an object before me, 
to remember where I last saw a given person, to find a prin- 
ciple applicable to a case in hand. For a time I fail in my 



HOW VOLITION CAN AID IN KESUSCITATING THE PAST. 559 

endeavour, but by prolonged effort I at last effect the desired 
recovery. 

It is interesting to ascertain in what precise form the 
power of the will makes itself felt in aiding the intellectual 
forces of reproduction. At what point does this influence 
operate ? Can it simply augment a contiguous adhesive- 
ness too feeble, or the attraction of a similarity too little 
marked ? 

To the best of my judgment, the influence is indirect ; 
that is to say, there is no power of increasing the energy of 
the associating bond, either of contiguity or of similarity, by a 
voluntary effort. The movement of the intellect is withdrawn 
from the control of volition. I know no fact that would tend 
to show that one thought can be made to succeed another by 
mere will as one movement of a limb ma}^ be made to succeed 
another. The modes of interference of a volition I conceive 
to be as follows : 

(1.) In exciting the nervous system so as .to exalt the 
intensity of the mental processes. It is the nature of an end 
strongly felt to stimulate and excite the whole frame of body 
and mind. Difficulty adds fuel to the flame. In such a state 
of things everything we do is done with more vigour. The 
bodily efforts are stronger, the senses are more alive, the 
volitions are more intense, the intellect is sharpened. Not 
that excitement always produces these effects unmixed. It 
occasionally happens that the system is incapacitated for a 
pressing emergency by the unusual fervour communicated to 
the bodily and mental movements. Some constitutions are 
rendered more alert and active by excitement, others are 
unhinged. Nevertheless I am disposed to recognise it as a 
property of the human mind, that we can bring about a 
temporary exaltation of all the powers belonging to it, the 
forces of intellectual reproduction being included. This exalta- 
tion may be effected at the instance of a strong desire, pur- 
pose, or voluntary effort. 

(2.) Volition may govern intellectual attention in the same 
manner as observation is influenced by our will. When many 
things are before the eye, some are observed and the rest 



560 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

passed by. A strong liking for one object of the scene 
stimulates the movements that direct the gaze in that direction : 
as an infant turns its eyes to the flame of a candle or a familiar 
face. Now, I have already maintained a lengthened argument 
to show that in the recovery of objects as ideas, when they 
are no longer present as realities, the same nervous circles and 
the same organs of sense and movement are occupied as in the 
original perception during the actual presence. The ideal 
picture of a building is a series of impressions sustained in the 
optic and moving apparatus of the eye and in the circles of 
the brain that were affected at the time when we were gazing 
on the actual building. Now as we have the power to prolong 
our gaze at pleasure upon the real object, to turn from one 
part to another, to examine some points minutely and pass 
the rest over, so when this building becomes a recollec- 
tion, the same power of varying the inward gaze remains to 
us. We can dwell upon the outline, to the exclusion of the 
details, we can concentrate the attention upon a column or a 
cornice, we can indulge our recollection of the appearance of 
the material ; in a word, we can deal with the idea, notion, or 
recollection, as we could with the reality. Volition is not 
crippled by the transition from the actual to the ideal : all 
because, as I conceive, the same organs are concerned in both. 
If the objects of observation were made to pass into a separate 
chamber of the mind when they existed as ideas, I should 
have a difficulty in comprehending how they could be reached 
by this voluntary control ; because I look upon volition as 
existing only in connexion with the active organs, that is with 
the muscular system. Even in the sphere of thought, this 
limitation holds ; at least such is my view. The same volition 
that rules the bodily eye, can rule the mental, because that 
mental eye is still the bodily one. 

Thus, then, volition operates in aiding the recovery of the 
past through the power of directing and fixing the attention 
on any of the objects present to the mind at the time, to the 
exclusion of others. I remember one link of an otherwise 
forgotten chain : I dwell upon this link till it become more 
vivid itself, and thus acquire the power of calling up the rest. 



DIFFICULT EECOLLECTION. 561 

The object thus selected is the one made vividly present, and 
thereby becomes the starting point of association. The idea 
that next comes up in the movement of reproduction will be 
some associate or similar of this one thus rendered prominent 
in the view ; just as the thing that we select for special obser- 
vation out of a various array, seen by the eye, will be the 
thing that will suggest the next idea that rises before the 
mind. "We can, therefore, always give a preference of attention 
to one of the many objects that come up to our recollection, 
and whichever is thus preferred will be constituted the sug- 
gestive object ; and so it will happen that the resuscitated 
trains will be those in accordance with the purposes or ends 
of the moment. 

In difficult or laboured recollection we have already seen 
that the chief hope lies in attaining additional bonds of asso- 
ciation. An effort of volition puts us in the way of com- 
manding these. The effort consists in fastening the attention 
on various things within the view till these, one after another, 
are rendered suggestive of trains of ideas, some one of which 
perchance may have a connexion with the thing sought, and 
may supplement the deficient bond up to the full power of 
recal. In searching for a historic parallel, for example, we 
may suppose the power of similarity unequal to the task of 
evoking a proper instance. The mind then starts off in a train 
of contiguity over the field of history ; which proceeds not by 
any voluntary power of commanding one fact to succeed 
another, but by directing the view on a starting point, the 
age of Alexander the Great, for instance ; with the atten- 
tion fixed on him, the associated particulars of his time, so far 
as they have been made coherent, flow in of their own accord. 
This power of concentrating the attention on any part of a 
circle of notions present to the mind, like the power of directing 
the observation on some one aspect of a real scene, is, in my 
view, the main function of volition in the restorations due to 
intellect. 







562 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 



THE SINGLING OUT OF ONE AMONG MANY TRAINS. 

14. If I look at a mountain, there are many trains that I 
may be led into by taking this as a point to start from. By con- 
tiguity, I may pass to the other mountains of the chain, to the 
valleys and villages beyond, to the mineral composition of the 
mass, to the botan}', to the geological structure, to the historical 
events happening there. By similarity, I may be led away to 
mountains that I have seen in other lands, or in the represen- 
tations of the painter and poet, to the analogous geometrical 
forms, to equivalent artistic effects. All these vents may be 
open to me, but it will happen that I go on some one track 
by preference, and there will be a reason for this preference. 
Perhaps one of the associations may have come by repetition 
to have greater force than any other; I may have been so 
accustomed to associate together the mountain and the 
neighbouring village that I am led at once upon this one 
special transition. Another cause may be the presence of a 
second associating bond. If I see the adjoining mountain I 
am then liable to be led along the chain ; if I catch the 
glancings of the cascades there is a double link of contiguity 
tending to carry my mind to the river flowing from the sides 
of the mountain. If historical events have been recently in 
my mind, the events referable to this locality are suggested. 
If botany or geology is my study, a bent corresponding to 
these is impresssed on the current of thought. If a geometer, 
the forms suggested to me by preference are the figures of 
geometry, if an artist, the forms of art spring up instead. 

A case like this almost demands a compound attraction to 
make the mind move at all. We might imagine an intellec- 
tual situation so equally balanced that no restoration took 
place in any direction, just as in a conflict of equal volitions. 
Some inequality of restorative power in the various trains, or 
some second association coming in aid of one to give that one 
a preponderance, is the condition of an effective recollection in 
any direction. The case of an intellectual stand-still between 
opposing suggestions is neither chimerical nor unexampled. 



MENTAL HABITS AND PRESENT SUGGESTIONS. 563 

I will suppose another instance. A violent storm has 
flooded the rivers, blown down trees and buildings, and in- 
spired general terror. The trains of thought suggested by 
such an incident are extremely various, and will depend on 
the mental condition of the observer in other respects, or on 
the special ideas that concur with the aspect common to all. 
The sailor's wife thinks of her husband at sea. The merchant 
and underwriter have their thoughts on the same element. 
The farmer calculates the losses to his fields. The millowner 
sees a prospect of abundant water power. The meteorologist 
studies the direction, duration, and force of the hurricane, and 
compares it with previous cases. The poet sees grand and im- 
posing effects. The religious man has his mind carried upwards 
to the Deity. 

These instances imply some habitual attitude of the mind, 
or an emotion, occupation, or pursuit, ever ready as a starting- 
point to the intellectual movement, and combining itself with 
every casual impetus given to the mental trains, so as to con- 
stitute an element of the composite effect. The principle is 
exactly the same in cases where the second association is pre- 
sent merely by accident. 

15. We have more than once adverted to the mental aggre- 
gates formed by the cluster of properties attaching to natural 
objects, especially as viewed by the scientific mind. Thus the 
idea of the mineral quartz is a vast assemblage of facts, pro- 
perties, and influences, all which are liable to come before the 
view, when the mineral is seen or named. So even a naked 
circle is rich in associations to the geometrical mind. It does 
not therefore follow that every time a mineralogist looks upon 
a piece of quartz all its many qualities shall rise and pass 
before his view, or that every circle shall hurry the mind of a 
Geometer all through the Third Book of Euclid. The asso- 
ciating links in both cases are good and sound ; but some 
motive additional to the force of the acquired adhesionsis 
needed actually to recover the train. Not only must the 
mind be disengaged from other trains, there must also be a 
positive stimulus, a second starting point, to individualize and 
determine the bent of the suggesting power to one or other of 

o o 2 



56 ± COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

the many associated ideas. If I am handling a piece of quartz 
and trying a knife-edge upon it, the degree of hardness of the 
mineral is the quality suggested ; if an acid is at hand the 
chemical action of quartz is brought up to the view, and so 
on. When one of the many properties of the circle strung 
together in the mind of a mathematician is resuscitated by 
preference, it is by the agency of some specializing notion 
pointing to that individual. The most highly cultivated 
mind has moments of perfect quiescence, and yet how numerous 
the possible outlets of thought at every moment ! 

OBSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATIONS. 

1 6. It will have occurred to the reader that thoughts may 
be prevented from rising in the mind, notwithstanding an 
adequate force of association with something already present. 
I have shown how a strong emotion will forbid objects dis- 
cordant with it to make their appearance ; and it has just 
been seen that one object is brought forward and others kept 
in the background in consequence solely of the excess of force 
in the favoured direction. 

This is not all. A recollection is sometimes made impos- 
sible through the mind's being inextricably seized with some- 
thing very near what is sought, but yet different. We are 
often in this state of embarrassment in remembering names. 
Falling accidentally into a wrong articulation we are unable to 
get free of the coil ; and it is not till some time afterwards 
that we are even in a position to give a fair trial to the recol- 
lective adhesion actually existing in the case. So a stroke of 
similarity may be effectually resisted by the presence of a 
second idea repugnant to the reinstatement. The principle of 
compound association necessarily implies this power of obstruc- 
tion. If two ideas, by both pointing to a third, constitute a 
prevailing bond of restoration, it must likewise happen that if 
these two present ideas point in opposite directions, they will 
be liable to neutralize one another's efficacy. The power of 
assisting implies the power of resisting. 

Both in the subject of the present chapter and in speaking 



CONFLICT OF DIFFERENT MODES OF VIEWING THINGS. 565 

of constructive associations in the following chapter, we have 
room for exemplifying the distracting influence of too many- 
ideas. Promptitude of action is exceedingly favoured by the 
fewness of the considerations that enter into a case. Marvels 
of ingenuity are often accomplished through the lucky absence 
of superfluous suggestions. In the operations of animals 
happy efforts occur to surprise us, as being apparently out of 
keeping with the range of their faculties ; in some of those 
cases the explanation is to be sought in the limitation of the 
views. The animal does not suffer from a crowd of incom- 
patible associations. The same circumstance explains the 
extraordinaiy facility of speech, or the readiness in action, of 
men very deficient in mental force generally. 

17. Obstructive association may be traced on a grand 
scale in the conflict of different modes of viewing the objects 
and occurrences of the world. There is a standing hostility 
between the artistic and the scientific modes of looking 
at things, and an opposition less marked between the scientific, 
or the theoretical, and the practical points of view. The 
artistic mind is obstructed by the presence of considerations of 
scientific truth, and the scientific mind, bent on being artistic, 
walks encumbered, and with diminished energy. Poetic fiction 
is never so brilliant as when the trammels of truth are set 
aside. 

A good instance of the obstructiveness of incompatible ideas 
is found in the effort of guessing riddles and conundrums. These 
usually turn upon the equivocal meanings of words. Now a 
mind that makes use of language to pass to the serious import 
or genuine meanings, is disqualified from following out the 
play of equivocation, not because the requisite associations do 
not exist, but because these are overborne by others inimical 
to the whole proceeding. 

ASSOCIATION OF CONTRAST. 

18. Aristotle's enumeration of the associating principles 
of the mind included Contrariety, along with Similarity and 
Coadjacency. Various subsequent writers have likewise viewed 



566 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

Contrast as a primitive suggesting force of our intellectual 
constitution. 

It is a well-known fact that objects do on many occasions 
bring before the mind their contraries. An intense light will 
suggest darkness or shade ; present sorrows will bring up past 
joys ; and a moment of brilliant prosperity may not be un- 
favourable to the recollection of times of adversity. Yet I do 
not conceive it necessary to suppose an independent principle 
of suggestion for this class of cases. If there were a power in 
the mind to make contraries recal each other, as similars do, 
we should see much more of this suggestion of opposites than 
is actually found. For, after all, the bringing to mind of 
qualities the contrary of those present to the view, is not by 
any means a constant occurrence ; we might call it an excep- 
tion rather than a rule. In the great preponderance of cases 
things suggest their like and not their opposite ; whereas the 
coexistence of two forces of restoration, one for similars and 
the other contraries, would necessarily lead to innumerable 
intellectual conflicts. 

The cases of the suggestion of Contrast actually occurring 
are quite explicable without going beyond the principles 
already discussed. Both contiguity and similarity aid in the 
operation, as the following considerations will show. 

First, as to Contiguity, it is to be observed that the greater 
number of contrasts are, for reasons to be seen presently, 
habitually coupled together in common speech, and we thereby 
acquire a tendency to pass from the one to the other by mere 
rote, like completing a hackneyed form of words. Such 
associated couples as white and black, high and low, up and 
down, large and small, thick and thin, weak and strong, young 
and old, rich and poor, life and death, pain and pleasure, true 
and false, — are in everybody's memory; if one member is 
presented the other is instantly ready to come up. Among 
our acquisitions of Contiguity, many scores of these contrasting 
pairs are to be found. This fact alone would suffice to render 
contrasting qualities suggestive of each other. 

Next, as to the bearing of Similarity on the case in hand. 
It is an old maxim that contraries imply community of kind. 



CONTEAST IMPLIES LIKENESS. 567 

Where there is nothing common, there can be no opposition. 
We oppose a long road to a short road, we cannot oppose a 
long road to a loud sound. We can contrast black with white 
because they agree in kind — they are both colours or modes 
of light. Thus it is that when any quality is present to the 
mind, the opposite quality never can be far off, seeing that 
this is only another species of the same kind of object. When 
we see a,ny one gaily attired, the subject of personal decora- 
tion is brought before the view, and one variety of it suggests 
other varieties by virtue of the generic agreement, and among 
these suggested instances there may occur cases of squalor and 
meanness. So when we encounter a person of low fortunes, 
the subject of human conditions is present to the view, and by 
similarity other instances may be brought up, the first to 
occur being naturally those agreeing in the features of the 
present case, but not to the exclusion of cases with varying or 
even contrasting features. One member of a class may at any 
time suggest the remaining members, notwithstanding the 
differences that coexist with what is common to the whole 
class. This is a case of the law of similarity. 

We have further to note the emotion that contrasts give 
rise to, tending to impress them on the mind with more 
than ordinary force. This does not happen in all contrasts, 
but there are some peculiarly disposed to generate strong 
feeling. 

To take one class of examples. When any quality is 
present in a painful excess, the opposite quality is unavoid- 
ably suggested as a remedy to the eviL Darkness in this way 
causes a craving for light, and too much light impels us to 
seek the shade. So cold and heat, hunger and repletion, 
exercise and rest, and many other things operate in the same 
way. 

Again, there is a strong emotion of the poetic or artistic 
kind, generated by many contrasts. We are moved by seeing 
infancy and age placed together ; the still greater contrast of 
life and death has a solemnizing influence. In the fortunes 
of men and nations, we are struck with the conjunction of the 
high and the low, with the greatness that has emerged from 



568 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

obscurity, and the pride that goeth before a fall. This effect 
has been worked up in the poetic literature of nations. 
Among the Greeks, the idea of the nemesis was an intense 
ever-present conception; even the accurate mind of Herodotus 
was superstitiously sensitive on this point. In no age has 
either the poet or the moralist allowed the reverses of 
human conditions to drop out of the view of the multitude. 
All the contrasts of this class are therefore disposed to be 
mutually suggestive to a very high degree. 

These three influences — Contiguity, Similarity, and the 
concurrence of Emotion — seem to me quite adequate to the 
explanation of the associating force of Contrast, to the full 
extent of the operation of that force in the mental system. 

19. There is an instance, under the present head, worthy 
of being briefly attended to, namely, the power of a present 
idea, opinion, or proposition, to recal to mind any former 
ideas inconsistent with this. Such a power exists, and the 
proper effect of it is to make us discard incompatible principles, 
so that unity and consistency may prevail among our beliefs. 
The contrast of the true and the false is herein included. 

The operation is a case of similarity as illustrated in the 
preceding paragraph. Inconsistent propositions must have 
the same subject, but opposite predicates. ' Gold is heavy/ 
and 'gold is light/ are contradictory statements; the subject, 
gold, is the same, but the properties affirmed are opposite. 
' The planets move in circles/ ' the planets move in ellipses;' 
these are incompatible assertions; the mind refuses assent to 
both of them when presented together. Now one of the most 
important functions of the resuscitating force of similarity is, to 
recal to mind all former assertions incompatible with one now 
presented, the reinstatement taking place in virtue of the 
common fact that makes the subject of the proposition. If I 
have ever affirmed or admitted the allegation, that the 
Homeric poems were the work of one man, and if now I am 
asked to believe that these poems were composed by several 
authors, I cannot help being reminded of my former belief, 
seeing that the subject, namely, 'the authorship of the 
Homeric poems' carries me back to former occasions when 



CLEARING THE MIND OF INCONSISTENCY. 569 

the same subject was under my consideration, and makes 
present the opinion then entertained on the subject. In this 
way the past and the present are confronted as effectually as 
if the opposites had been affirmed at the same moment, and 
I am thereupon urged, by the whole force of revulsion against 
inconsistency inherent in my nature, to dismiss one or other 
of the conflicting opinions. 

20. The force of similarity, when sufficiently well deve- 
loped, and not restricted in its operation, is able to rid the 
mind of contradictions, in so far as this can be done by bring- 
ing the conflicting opinions together. A present assertion 
revives any past assertion that may have been made on the 
same subject, and, if the two are contradictory, there is oppor- 
tunity given for choosing between the two. It happens, how- 
ever, in fact, that the same mind will at different times main- 
tain irreconcilable propositions unawares. Either the power 
of reinstatement by similarity is too feeble, or there is some 
strong feeling at work that repels the approach of any fact 
not in accordance with the view held for the time being. 
Both causes are found at work. In an average intellect the 
power of similarity is not energetic enough to search the past 
for all the statements that may have been made upon any sub- 
ject now in hand. Many inconsistencies are too subtle for the 
detection of an ordinary mind. When we add the power of 
emotion, — the influence of the likings and dislikings, — to this 
intellectual feebleness, we have a sufficient explanation of the 
co-existence of contradictions in the same mind. We have 
already observed that a strong feeling will rebut all ideas 
incompatible with itself, however strongly they may be sug- 
gested by the forces of association. I can suppose the Apostle 
Peter to have been unconscious of contradicting himself within 
a few hours when under excitement for his personal safety. 
The strong affirmations he had so lately made on the very same 
subject might not even have come into his mind. A current 
of violent emotion, besides overbearing hostile considerations 
that may be actually before the mind, can so obstruct, I might 
almost say paralyse, the workings of association, that such 
considerations, however near, shall not be allowed to come on 



570 COMPOUND ASSOCIATION. 

the stage. This is one of the characteristic influences of 
emotion. Intellect cannot perform its ordinary functions in 
the presence of strong feeling. The accordance or discordance 
of objects and recollected ideas with the character of the pre- 
sent emotion, counts for so much in the recovery of the past, 
that the purely intellectual links have but a small share in 
the result. The tendency of intellect proper is to banish all 
contradictions from the mind ; in other words, to arrive at con- 
sistency, the test of truth : the tendency of men's emotions of 
all kinds runs counter to this, and renders the spectacle of a 
thoroughly consistent human being no less rare than admirable. 



571 



CHAPTER IV. 

CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

By means of association, the mind has the power to 
form combinations or aggregates different from any 
that have been presented to it in the course of 
experience. 

I. ^THROUGHOUT the whole of the preceding exposition 
-L we have had in view the literal resuscitation, revival, 
or reinstatement of former sensations, images, emotions, and 
trains of thought. No special reference has been made to the 
operation known by such names as Imagination, Creation, 
Constructiveness, Origination ; through which we are supposed 
to put together new forms, or to construct images, conceptions, 
pictures, and modes of working such as we have never before 
had any experience of. Yet the genius of the painter, poet, 
musician, and inventor in the arts and sciences, evidently 
implies such a process as this. 

Under the head of similarity we have had to recognise a 
power tending to originality and invention, as when in virtue 
of the identifying of two things formerly considered remote 
from each other, whatever is known of the one is instantly 
transferred to the other, thereby constituting a new and 
instructive combination of ideas. Such was the case when 
Franklin's identification of electricity and thunder led to the 
extension of all the properties of the Leyden jar to explain a 
thunder-storm. The power of recalling like by like in spite of 
remoteness, disguise, and false lures enters, as we have seen, 
into a very large number of inventive efforts, particularly 
in science. Rut we have now to consider constructions of a 
much higher order of complexity. There are discoveries that 
seem nothing short of absolute creations, as for example, the 



572 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

whole science of Mathematics ; while in the Fine Arts, 
a Gothic cathedral, a frieze of the Parthenon, a Paradise Lost, 
are very far from repetitions of experienced objects, even with 
all the power of extension that the highest reach of the 
identifying faculty can impart. 

Nevertheless, I mean to affirm that the intellectual forces 
operating in those creations are no other than the associating 
forces already discussed. For the new combinations grow out 
of elements already in the possession of the mind, and brought 
forward according to the laws above laid down. This position 
we shall now endeavour to illustrate. 



MECHANICAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS. 

2. In our mechanical education, complex and difficult 
actions are acquired by taking the simple acts separately. 
We learn part No. i by itself; then part No. 2, No. 3, and 
so on ; and if each of these parts were so firmly acquired as to 
be maintained without any exercise of the attention, we 
should have no new labour in performing them altogether. 
The performance of the whole is the performance of the parts ; 
a volition directing the order and time of the various exer- 
tions constitutes all that can be pointed out as peculiar to the 
fact of combination. 

Most commonly mechanical combinations are learned by 
keeping up the exercise of the parts already acquired, and 
adding new ones in the manner now indicated. Thus in 
learning to dance the pupil is first put through the simple 
positions and steps ; and when these are firmly fixed, they are 
performed along with other additions, and so on, until an 
exceedingly complex movement is arrived at. There is no 
new fact of mind in passing from the performance of a single 
act by itself to the performance of that act in company with a 
second ; the only peculiarity of the case is the demand for 
the thorough acquisition of the movement requiring to be 
kept up while the attention is directed upon some other move- 
ment. When the degree of cohesion is sufficient to make the 



EARLY EFFORTS OF SPEECH. 573 

first of the two self-supporting, there is nothing else wanted to 
make it combine with the second. 

Our mechanical acquirements often demand the suppres- 
sion of one member of a complex action, a decomposition, as 
it were, of some of the concurring movements that we have 
seeD to be natural to the system. In this case a voluntary 
effort is directed upon the member whose movement is to be 
suppressed, during the exercise of the complex whole. In 
walking there is a natural tendency to swing the arms and 
the body along with the lower limbs. By a voluntary effort 
these extra movements may be arrested, and the primitive 
aggregate reduced to a smaller aggregate. So the wild ecstasy 
of the animal spirits may be trained to burst out with the 
total suppression of vocal accompaniment. For this purpose 
we combine with the instinctive display a negative acquire- 
ment, an exertion for the suppression of a movement, and the 
result is an effect consisting of a various display, minus one of 
the members of the primitive combination. 

VERBAL CONSTRUCTIVENESS. 

3. The facility the mind has in passing from mere repeti- 
tion into new combinations is perhaps most obvious in the use 
of language. Scarcely any succession of words uttered in 
everyday intercourse is precisely the same as any other suc- 
cession formerly said or heard by the speaker. It seems par- 
ticularly easy for us to adapt and modify this acquisition in an 
endless variety of ways. 

In the early efforts of imitation, whereby words are first 
learned, there is a constructive process. The child has learned 
to say ba and na, and when these separate sounds become 
very easy to the organs, a chance impulse makes them run 
together into ban. Here, as before, the ripeness of the pre- 
liminary acquirements separately is the main condition. 

When a number of words have been acquired, with a few 
simple forms of intelligible sentences, it becomes easy to make 
new applications of these forms. The child has learned to say 



574 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

' give me/ and also the names of a number of other persons 
and things, ' mamma/ ' pussy/ ' dolly / and having the wish 
to give something to one of these other parties, there is no 
difficulty in displacing 'me' from the formula and admitting 
' mamma/ ' pussy/ as the case may be. An effort of volition 
is implied. Two utterances are present to the mind ; the arti- 
culate activity is awakened and repeats these utterances perhaps 
in two or three ways ; one is hit upon such as to satisfy the 
purpose of the moment, and being hit upon is retained and 
repeated. The effort of substitution once or twice put in 
practice becomes easy ; the mind knows as it were to carry 
on the current of words so far, then stop, and fall into a 
different current, so as thereby to produce a third different 
from either. It is a part of the voluntary command that we 
acquire over our actions, that we can stop a train at any stage, 
and commence another train from that point, and this is all 
that is required in such a case of verbal substitution as we 
have now supposed. Out of the two sentences, ' I am going 
out for the day,' ' I am coming home for the night/ a third 
sentence is constructed, ' I am going out for the night/ by no 
further effort of volition than this, namely, to arrest the 
current of articulation at a certain point in the first, to pass 
into the second, suspending vocal articulation till the word 
' for' is reached, then tack on the remainder to the words 
already enounced from the other. The constructiveness, there- 
fore, lies not in any purely intellectual operation, but in the 
command that the volition has obtained over the movements, 
by virtue of which command these are suspended and com- 
menced at pleasure in the service of a particular end. The 
intellectual forces bring to mind the former acquisitions bear- 
ing on the situation, and if no one previous form is strictly 
applicable, it is a property of the volition to take part of one 
and part of another, and to make successive trials if necessary, 
until the want is satisfied. 

Throughout the whole wide-ranging operation of adapting 
old forms of words to new meanings, this is essentially the 
process pursued. When all the elements requisite for a new 
combination are at hand, a volition alone is needed to make 



CONDITIONS TO BE SATISFIED BY LANGUAGE. 57-5 

the selection and adaptation suited to the end in view. When 
there is not a sufficiency of forms within reach of the present 
recollection, the processes of intellectual recovery must be 
plied to bring up others, until the desired combination is 
attained. A voluntary effort is quite equal to the task of 
cutting down and making up, choosing and rejecting, sorting 
and re-sorting ; the feeling that possesses the mind of the end 
to be served, is the criterion to judge by, and when this is 
satisfied the volition ceases, the stimulus being no longer 
present. In all difficult operations, for purposes or ends, the 
rule of trial and error is the grand and final resort. 

It would thus appear that the first condition of good 
verbal combinations for the expression of meaning is a suffi- 
cient abundance of already formed combinations to choose 
from, in other words, the effect depends on the previous 
acquisitions, and on the associating forces whereby old forms 
are revived for the new occasion. If a complex meaning has 
to be expressed, every part of this meaning will revive by 
contiguity and similarity some former idea of an identical or 
like nature, and the language therewith associated ; and out 
of the mixed assemblage of foregone phrases, the volition must 
combine a whole into the requisite unity, by trial and error. 
The more abundant and choice the material supplied from the 
past by the forces of intellectual recovery, the better will be 
the combination that it is possible for the mind to form by the 
selecting effort. This process is one so obvious and familiar, 
that I need not waste space on examples. 

4. Let us next advert to some of the other conditions that 
have to be satisfied in making verbal combinations ; for as 
yet I have alluded only to the one condition of conveying a 
given meaning. Certain grammatical forms have to be 
observed ; likewise there are rhetorical proprieties or rules of 
good taste ; a certain melody or cadence is sought to be 
imparted ; and in poetic composition this last quality has to 
be attained under the restrictions of metre and rhyme. As a 
matter of course, the more numerous the conditions, the more 
difficult it is to satisfy them all ; but the mode of proceeding 
is not altered in any essential point. When there are four or 



576 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

five different conditions to satisfy, the range of choice must be 
so much the wider. It is not enough that I can combine one 
form of words sufficient to express a certain meaning, I must 
be able from my verbal resources, recovered from the past, to 
construct several forms all equally good as regards meaning, 
so that I may be able to choose the one that satisfies the other 
conditions as well. In fact, the mind must possess not one 
way of bringing out a certain effect, but a plurality of ways, 
and out of this plurality we fix upon the form that yields 
some second effect also desired. If a third effect is wanted 
there must be a power of altering the combination already 
made without losing those already gained ; and for this end 
we must be able to command a choice of equivalent phrases in 
the room of those that are discordant as regards the new end.* 
Thus it is that we must have a plurality of ways of expressing 
any given meaning ; a plurality of forms of the same gram- 
matical construction ; a plurality of forms of the same rheto- 
rical propriety, and a great variety of sequences observing the 
same cadence. Out of this opulence of synonymes, we can at 
last light upon a combination that satisfies all the conditions 
of the case. The refusal to combine in any case can only be 
met by bringing forward new varieties of phrase, sometimes 
by the bond of meaning, at other times by the bond of gram- 
mar, of taste, or of cadence. The more richly stored the mind 
is on any one of those particulars, that is, the greater the 
number of words associated with meanings, or with melodious 
falls, the more surely will that one condition be observed, 
whatever may become of the rest. If the tendency of the 
mind has been to lay up stores of expressions adapted to the 
conveyance of meaning, there will be no difficulty in matching 
a new meaning, although there may be a difficulty in getting 
the language to comply with other requisites. If, on the 



* Southey's lines on the Fall of Lodore are an instance to show that a 
word-artist is a person that can bring up for any occasion a large variety of 
names for the same thing. It is by means of this abundance of past and 
recoverable phraseology that the elaborate constructions of high composition 
are at all possible. The number of words that pass across the mind in form- 
ing a single couplet may be a hundred times those actually made use of. 



CONSTRUCTION OF FEELINGS OF WEIGHT. 577 

other hand, through a great susceptibility to cadence, and by- 
being very much versed in melodious forms of speech, these 
forms be ready to occur in great abundance on all occasions, the 
flow of speech will be sure to be musical, but there will be no 
security for the compliance with the other conditions ; and it 
may happen that both sense and grammar are neglected. Still 
out of the abundance of choice presented by this acquisition, a 
patient mind may seize upon forms that shall not be devoid 
of any of the other important attributes. Or if the first sug- 
gestion of the material of a sentence is left to the associations 
with meaning, it will be very easy for such a mind to make 
substitutions and alterations to meet the oratorical condition. 
In these efforts of combination, the disposition of the mind to 
be satisfied with a more or less perfect reconciliation of the 
conflicting claims is always an element in the result. 

FEELINGS OF MOVEMENT. 

5. We next proceed to exemplify constructiveness among 
our feelings and perceptions, or the more passive elements of 
the mind. 

Movement gives rise, as has been seen, to a variety of 
conscious states ; some emotional, as the states of exercise and 
repose, and others with an almost exclusively intellectual 
character, as the feelings of pressure, space, and form. I shall 
here take a few examples from the last class. 

Having acquired a discriminative sensibility correspond- 
ing to some one resistance or pressure, it is possible for us to 
construct the feeling of another differing in degree. I possess 
in my hand, after much practice, the engrained impression, 
say, of a pound weight; and I am commanded to construct, 
conceive, or imagine, the impression corresponding to three 
pounds. For this end I must endeavour to fuse the two 
notions of one pound and of a triple, being formerly very 
familiar with both in their separation ; the notion of double- 
ness being derived from my experience of the fact in quan- 
tities of various kinds. By keeping my mind very much 
bent upon the two elements in question, I may succeed in 

P P 



578 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

conjuring up an impression compounded of both, and very 
nearly corresponding to the actual feeling of a three-pound 
weight in my hand. If there be any difficulty in the case, 
this will arise from my not being perfectly in possession of 
the separate notions, more especially the feeling of the one 
pound. In the same way I might attain a conception of half 
a pound, of two pounds, and less accurately of ten or twenty 
pounds. The more delicate my perception of the degrees of the 
quality as felt by my muscular sensibility, the nearer I should 
come to the mark, for it is quite easy to increase or diminish 
a perception of this kind, and if we have a sufficiently nice 
judgment of the result when actually attained, we shall 
succeed perfectly in the construction aimed at. 

We are not unfrequently called upon to make efforts im- 
plying this sort of adaptiveness. If I have been accustomed 
to jump a ditch three feet wide, I can easily increase the 
notion of the effort requisite for five feet. So in throwing 
objects to hit a mark; we have in this case a power of gra- 
duating our strength by combining our notion of increased or 
diminished quantity with the sensibility acquired, corre- 
sponding to some one distance. In this case the construc- 
tiveness is first operated upon the pre-conceived idea of the 
action, whence it passes to the action itself. 

The same power of changing degree may be put forth in 
reference to size and form. Having acquired the arm sensi- 
bility to a sweep of one foot, we can construct a feeling cor- 
responding to the sweep of two feet, or half a foot. We can 
also change a given area from one form to another. By 
fixing the mind upon the form of a circle, and the area of a 
pane of glass, we can construct the conception of a round 
piece of the same extent. 

The emotional feelings of movement present a somewhat 
different case. Under the two next heads I shall bring 
forward examples, bringing out the peculiarity attaching to 
the case of emotional constructiveness generally. 



579 



CONSTRUCTIVENESS IN THE SENSATIONS. 

6. Beginning with organic sensibility, we might cite in- 
stances of constructiveness in the endeavour to conceive pains 
or hurts of a kind different from any we have experienced. 
We can as usual make the change of degree; and if the new 
state is a combination of two already familiar to us, or one 
minus some second, the conception is more or less in our 
power. 

The agreeable and joyous states of general sensibility are 
very various. Each one has experience of some of them, 
and starting from these we may be made to conceive others, 
if the description, that is, the method of compounding the 
known into the known, be clearly given. I may never have 
experienced the ecstasy of intoxication by opium, but if I 
have felt a number of states whose combination would amount 
to this effect, and if these are pointed out to me, I can by an 
effort recal and fuse them into one whole, so as to construct 
the feeling in question. This is by no means an easy under- 
taking to the generality of people ; and the reason is, that the 
strong organic feelings are not readily recoverable at all times 
in their entire fulness. Some one leading element of the 
combination sought would require to be present in the reality, 
and then it might be possible to bring up others, and to form 
a new conception, by introducing the requisite modifications. 
But, on the other hand, this method has its disadvantages; it 
is not easy to modify a strong and present reality by mere 
ideas; it would be more practicable to modify a mere recol- 
lectioD, which is itself an ideal thing. The non -intellectual 
nature of the organic feelings rendering them stubborn to 
recal, however powerful they are in the reality, is the great 
obstacle to our easily conceiving inexperienced varieties of 
them. A person may have enjoyed the pleasures of eating 
in a sufficient number of forms to possess all the elements 
necessary for conceiving the most luxurious feast that ever 
mortal man sat down to, yet it may not be possible to attain 
to the conception. The difficulty of forming new combina- 

p p 2 



580 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

tions, in some one region of sensations, is only another proof 
of the difficulty of retaining and recovering our own expe- 
riences in that region. If I cannot easily conceive a degree, 
or kind of hunger, beyond anything I have ever known, 
it is because the times of hunger that I have actually gone 
through cannot be well restored after they have completely 
passed away. 

Tastes, properly so called, being somewhat more intel- 
lectual than organic states, we can do more in the way 
of forming new combinations of them. Given a bitter, such as 
bitter aloes, and a saline taste, as of common salt, one might 
construct a taste combined of the two. So a sweet and 
an astringent might be fused. We might thus attain to the 
conception of tastes not actually experienced. The effort 
would doubtless be laborious in most instances, owing to the 
imperfect recollection that we have of tastes even after much 
repetition. A person specially educated in tasting would have 
so much less difficulty. If we wished to retain and revive the 
new conception, and to make it a possession of the mind, as 
much as the taste of sugar, we should require to repeat the 
effort of fusion a great many times. 

7. Without waiting to dwell upon the almost parallel case 
of smells, I shall pass to the first of the intellectual senses. 
Touch, including the muscular feelings associated with the 
proper tactile sensibility, furnishes a more abiding species of 
recollections than the sensations just noticed, and we may 
therefore look for a higher degree of combining power among 
the feelings characteristic of this sense. I can acquire the 
touch of an orange, that is, the bulk, the weight, and the cha- 
racter of the surface. I have acquired also the touch of a 
marble table, and the weight of marble as compared with 
other substances. By a voluntary exertion of the mind, 
directing the view on the round figure of the orange, and on 
the touch and specific gravity of the marble, I can make to 
emerge a new conception, the collective impression of a marble 
ball equal in size to the orange. Part of the difficulty in this 
trial consists in the disassociating or separating of elements 



ANALYSIS A REPULSIVE OPERATION. 581 

that have grown together in the mind ; this exercise is com- 
monly spoken of as an effort of abstraction, or analysis, and is 
arduous, on the one hand, according to the hold that the 
property to be disassociated has taken of the mind, and on 
the other hand according to the little hold that we have of the 
property to be substituted. If I were very strongly affected 
by the peculiar soft touch of the orange, and had very little 
interest in the cold hard contact of the marble, there would 
be a repugnance in my mind to the proposed transmutation, 
and the effort of abstractive, or analytic, volition preparatory 
to the new combination would be very severe. A mind sensi- 
tive to the warm and sensuous elements of touch and colour 
revolts from the operation, so familiar to the mathematician, 
of stripping these off, and leaving only naked forms and 
arbitrary symbols to engage the intellect. The double decom- 
positions illustrated by the above example, are made laborious 
by every circumstance that favours in the mind a preference 
for the combinations already existing, and correspondingly 
easy, when there is a partiality for the new combination that 
is to be the result. Thus it is that even when we have got 
into subjects very conceivable and retainable, unlike the 
organic sensations lately noticed, other difficulties may arise 
to clog the constructive operation. The mere effort of analysis 
is itself something considerable, so much so, that this is not a 
favourite avocation of the untutored mind, with which associa- 
tive growth is more genial than disassociating surgery ; but 
when the analysis has to be applied to break up favourite 
combinations, and constitute others of an unattractive kind, 
we are then aware of the tyrannical influence that the likings 
and dislikings, the sympathies and antipathies, exert over the 
intellectual processes. 

The very great difference between the constructions of 
Imagination and the combining operations for a Rational end 
is herein faintly shadowed. 

In the definition or description of the tactile quality of 
surfaces, — woods, cloths, minerals, metals, — &c, reference 
must be made to touches familiar to us, by whose combination 



582 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

we are supposed to make up the feeling of an inexperienced 
surface. Touch is one of the defining properties of minerals. 

8. In the very various states of mind excited through the 
sense of Hearing, there is great room for new combinations 
and constructions, the mode of operating being much the same 
as in the preceding instances. We may hear a note or an air 
sounded by an instrument or voice, and may wish to imagine 
it on a different instrument or voice. If we have a good 
mental grasp of the air and of the tones of the second instru- 
ment, this transference may be effected after a certain amount 
of effort. We have heard a piece performed on a fine band ; 
and we desire to conceive the effect of some other piece per- 
formed on the same band. Some faint notion of the result of 
such a combination might be attained, but the exercise is not 
one that is much attempted. Few people engage in an occu- 
pation of this nature, or endeavour to create to themselves 
inexperienced impressions with all the vividness of reality. 

'Imagine Macready. or Rachel, delivering that passage/ 
We have heard the passage, and Ave have heard Macready. A 
constructive effort taking place upon firm recollections of the 
two things to be combined might be successful in such an 
instance. A good imitator or mimic actually succeeds in 
modifying his recollections of his original to suit an entirely 
new discourse. The ability to make the combination, as in all 
other cases, rests in the first instance on the vivid possession 
of the separate elements. 

9. Under Sight, the sense of easy conception by pre- 
eminence, the examples of constructiveness are extremely 
copious. Light and shade, colour, size or dimensions, shape, 
distance, position,— are the constituents that concur in the 
complex perceptions of sight ; and it is possible to vary any 
given combination by putting out and taking in elements at 
pleasure. I see or remember a line of houses ; I can imagine 
it prolonged to double or triple the length ; or I can trans- 
form the whole line by the addition of a story to the height. 
In the landscape I see a mountain and wood standing apart ; 
I place the wood upon the mountain. Or to take Hobbes's 



NEW CONCEPTIONS AMONG OBJECTS OF SIGHT. 583 

example of constructiveness :* I have the idea of a mountain 
and the idea of gold, and by superimposing the one upon the 
other, I can evoke the image of a mountain of gold. The 
facility in all such cases, depends as usual, on the perfect and 
easy command the mind has of the separate ideas, owing to 
their having acquired a good ideal persistence. The combina- 
tion takes place of its own accord, if the elements are once 
properly brought together and kept, as it were, in close contact 
for a sufficient time. A continuance of the effort will enable 
us to retain the new image until the parts of it acquire a 
certain contiguous adhesiveness, after which we shall possess 
it as a mental recollection not differing essentially from the 
recollections of things actually seen. As in former examples, 
the decomposition and recomposition implied in the construc- 
tive effort may be aided or retarded by emotions. Hobbes's 
mountain of gold would emerge the more readily that the 
image is one to excite men's feelings, being an example of 
imagination in the more limited sense of the word, or in that 
.sense wherein lies the contrast between it and the creations of 
the intellect for scientific or practical ends. If I see a dress, 
and want to conceive it of some other colour, I can most easily 
substitute the colour that I am most familiar with, or have a 
special affection for. 

The disposition of the parts of a complicated object is 
rather trying to the constructive faculty. Wishing to re- 
arrange the furniture of a room, I endeavour to conceive 
beforehand the effect of a proposed arrangement. So with a 
garden ; a person must have a good retentiveness of the ideas 



* ' As when the water, or any liquid tiling moved at once by divers 
movements, receiveth. one motion compounded of them all ; so also the brain, 
or spirit therein, having been stirred by divers objects, composeth an imagi- 
nation of divers conceptions that appeareth single to the sense. As for 
example, the sense showeth at one time the figure of a mountain, and at 
another time the colour of c/ohl ; but the imagination afterwards hath them 
both at once in a golden mountain. From the same cause it is, there 
appear unto us castles in the air, chimeras, and other monsters which are 
not in rerum natura, but have been conceived by the sense in pieces at 
several times. And this composition is that which we commonly call fiction 
of the mind.' — Discourse on Human Nature, chap, iii., § 4. 



584? CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

of the parts in order to put together and hold firinly the new 
plan so as to judge of the effect of it before taking any 
measures to realize it. There is a great economy in the pos- 
session of such a power. A mind naturally pictorial, or dis- 
posed to retain visual images in general, and an education in 
the particular subject operated upon, are requisite for success 
in such an operation. The susceptibility to beauty, or to the 
emotional effects of the several combinations, acts in favour of 
every construction that yields the emotion, rendering it possible 
to put together those and separate others with far less difficulty. 
A person of sensitive taste can readily break up in idea a 
distasteful combination, and form a new one calculated to 
satisfy the craving for beauty ; while the same person might 
be totally incapable of breaking up a tasteful conjunction to 
compose a new arrangement devoid of this quality, and minis- 
tering solely to some end of practical utility or scientific 
truth. 

CONSTRUCTION OF NEW EMOTIONS. 

10. We may revive emotional states by contiguity or simi- 
larity, or by a composition of associating bonds ; and from two 
or more states thus revived new emotions may be generated 
by the working of the principle now under discussion. I have 
already touched upon this in speaking of the organic sensa- 
tions, these being almost purely emotional in their character. 
But if we pass to the feelings that are more recoverable and 
more retainable in the ideal form, we shall be in a better 
position for elucidating the peculiar features of the case. 

The problem is to realize emotions such as we have never 
experienced in ourselves, or have experienced too rarely to 
recal them by any effort of mere recollection. The feelings 
belonging to men whose character, position, occupation, &c, are 
totally different from our own, can in general be conceived 
only through a constructive process, operating upon feelings 
that we do possess. 

There are certain elementary emotions that belong to 
human nature in general, although manifested very unequally 
in consequence both of primitive differences of character, and 



THE ELEMENTARY EMOTIONS MUST BE EXPERIENCED. 585 

of variety in the outward circumstances of individuals. Every 
one has experience of love and hate, of property and pride, of 
feeling beauty and bestowing admiration. Should any one of 
the elementary feelings be absent from a character, no con- 
structive process is sufficient to create it; for what constructive- 
ness can produce is by that very fact not elementary. If, for 
example, a person were naturally devoid of the emotion of 
fear, this emotion could not be generated by any effort of 
composition that I am acquainted with. In like manner the 
irascible feeling seems so distinct and peculiar that we could 
not be made to conceive it without direct experience. When 
any emotion not entirely wanting is yet allowed to sleep in 
the character, the difficulty of rousing it may prove insuper- 
able ; thus it is that some men are unable to enter into the 
sentiment of religious veneration, and others are unable to 
comprehend the pleasures of the fine arts ; one class are 
utterly incapable of sympathising with the pursuit of scientific 
truth, and another can never be made to understand the feeling 
of disinterested usefulness. 

The emotions that can be acquired by construe tiveness 
are, therefore, the compound emotions, or some conceivable 
varieties of the elementary. We must be able in each case to 
specify certain primary feelings possessed by the person whom 
we address, the combination of which in a particular way shall 
yield the emotion that we desire to communicate or evoke. 
If the constituent elements are actually made present to the 
mind in their proper degree, the fusion will take place as a 
matter of course. Perhaps the best commencing exercise in 
this art of conceiving other men's feelings would be to change 
the degree of one of our own emotions. I have a certain dis- 
position to take on fear ; it being, however, apparent that 
another person, whose character I am desirous of realizing, is 
susceptible to a much greater extent, I must endeavour to 
assume for a time a pitch of terror much beyond my own. 
This can be done in various ways. I may go back upon times 
of my life when the emotion took a greater hold of me ; I 
may conceive occasions and circumstances of a kind to produce 
a more than ordinary degree of the state ; or I may revert to 



586 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

the particular subject that most easily depresses my courage. 
By these means I can be made to assume an unwonted amount 
of the feeling, and can come to approach the state of mind 
of the person supposed, so as to comprehend the actions 
flowing from that particular state. 

By some such efforts one might acquire an exalted cast of 
any familiar emotion. The exercise would cost both effort 
and time, but if we are able to revive with ease the past states 
of our own experience that bear on the case, we shall not be 
long in accomplishing the end in view. To acquire a new 
degree of intensity of any emotion so thoroughly as to be able 
to follow out all the influences and consequences of the feeling 
is a very high effort and demands iteration and time ; inas- 
much as there is implied in it the process of fixing into a 
permanent possession a state of mind that has been worked 
up with labour. Thus for the man that is only alive in a 
moderate degree to the pleasure of music to be able at any 
time to rise to the state of an enthusiast so as to depict that 
character in all its phases, there would be required a somewhat 
laborious training. Writers whose province it is to trace out 
and depict all the windings of character different from their 
own, must work themselves into a number of un-experienced 
degrees and modes of feeling, as a preparation for their task. 

1 1. The exercise of combining two emotions, so as to bring 
out a third different from either, is not intrinsically arduous. 
Everything depends upon the facility of assuming the elemen- 
tary feelings. Supposing a person inexperienced in the 
sentiment of property in land, but perfectly able to recal the 
feeling of property in other things and to conceive the emotions 
connected with land in men's minds generally, a fusion of the 
two states would make some approximation to the proprietorial 
feeling. If a person has ever known an affection of the 
nature of a passion for any one object, such a one is capable 
of conceiving, by an effort of transference, a passion for an 
object very different. Thus it is that Michelet in endeavouring 
to portray the attachment of the French peasant proprietor 
for his land, brings into the picture the feelings of strong per- 
sonal attachment. The difference of subject is great, but the 



RECOVERING EXTINCT MODES OF FEELING. 587 

attempt is not therefore hopeless. It would doubtless be 
much easier to transfer the feelings of love in one personal 
relation to some other relation by making allowance for the 
difference, as to pass from friendship to marriage, or to the 
parental relation. 

The historian, who has to deal with extinct modes of 
feeling, and who has to study truth in his delineations, is 
necessarily much versed in the exercise now under discus- 
sion. Mr. Grote forewarns his reader ' that there will occur 
numerous circumstances in the after political life of the Greeks 
which he will not comprehend unless he be initiated into the 
course of their legendary associations. He will not under- 
stand the frantic terror of the Athenian public during the 
Peloponnesian war, on the occasion of the mutilation of the 
statues called Hermse, unless he enters into the way in which 
they connected their stability and security with the domicilia- 
tion of the gods in the soil.' — Hist, of Greece, Preface, p. 17. 

Any man requiring to deal with his fellow beings practi- 
cally needs this power of accurately conceiving and appreciat- 
ing their feelings. An artist, on the other hand, who cares 
principally for the effects that he produces, and not for the 
strict truth of his conceptions, proceeds in a different way. 

CONCEETING THE ABSTRACT. 

1%. Under a former head, I have supposed the case of 
fusing the properties of two different objects so as to make a 
third different from either. Given a brick city and a marble 
surface, to conceive a marble city. This is to form a new 
concrete out of two pre-existing concretes. But we may go a 
step farther. Given the abstract properties to construct the 
concrete whole. Take, for example, the geometrical form of 
a pyramid and the colour of granite, and conceive the actual 
object as existing in nature. This is in most cases a some- 
what more difficult operation than the foregoing, but can 
hardly be said to involve any new or distinct effort. If we 
realize the constituent elements with sufficient vigour, and 
keep the two together in the mind, the construction is sure to 



588 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

follow. If we have but a feeble hold of one or other of the 
parts, a certain effort will be requisite to make them fall into 
their places in the new compound. 

When a plan and sections of a building are given, we have 
the means of realizing the form of the solid building ; when 
we add the colour of the surface or the appearance of the 
material to the eye, the concrete emerges in all its fulness. 
In this case the plan and sections would not be enough to 
give the solid conception, unless we had previously seen solid 
shapes. We require to fasten upon some remembered build- 
ing or form of building, and to alter this in the mind till we 
bring out a correspondence between it and the plan supposed- 
Thus, in order to realize a gothic church from a builder's 
designs, the easiest way would be to direct the view upon 
some church already familiar to us, and on that to make the 
alteration prescribed by those designs. This is a general 
maxim in concrete realization, and on it we can easily under- 
stand the conditions that render the operation easy. It is 
evident that a previous store of well-fixed objects of the par- 
ticular kind in question is the great requisite. If the past 
experience of the individual has given great opportunities for 
laying in such a store, and if the mind is naturally of a pic- 
torial and concrete order, the process of new construction has 
every advantage in its favour. Not to speak of the chance of 
possessing firm and recoverable ideas of objects approaching 
very near the new construction, there is a great facility in 
making the required alterations if the thing operated on is 
vividly and easily held in the view ; provided always that 
there is no serious obstruction arising from the feelings. 

To imagine a country from a map is a case of the same' 
nature. The effort consists in holding before the mind's eye 
a series of scenic views in all the richness of the colouring and 
all the fulness of the details, while performing the operation 
of cutting out and taking in so as to suit the prescribed 
outlines. An intellect rich in concrete, or living, conceptions 
of actual nature possesses the prime requisite for such a task. 

The mode of describing the objects of natural history is to 
enumerate the abstract properties. Thus a mineral is de- 



REALIZING THE CONCRETE FROM THE ABSTRACT. 589 

scribed by such abstractions as crystalline form, hardness, 
nature of surface, colour, lustre, &c. Now by a vigorous effort 
of constructive conception one might realize an actual speci- 
men from the assemblage of abstract qualities. So with a 
plant or animal. The condition of success in this event is 
exactly the same as in the preceding examples. The mind 
must be well versed in actual specimens so as to be able to 
lay hold of some concrete recollection, by operating upon 
which a new specimen will emerge possessing all the pro- 
perties of the description. A botanist can readily form to 
himself the picture of a new plant from the botanical descrip- 
tion ; a person less familiar with plants would find the con- 
struction very laborious, perhaps impossible. 

13. The more we analyze or decompose concrete objects 
into the abstract qualities that make them up, the more diffi- 
cult is it to remount to the concrete. Hence the most arduous 
attempt of all is to make actual nature rise up out of scientific 
and technical language, — to conceive minerals from a book 
of mineralogy, and the parts of the human body from ana- 
tomical description. This is the repulsive or unfavourable 
side of science and of abstract reasoning. On the other hand, 
it is by this process of resolving natural aggregates into their 
ultimate abstractions that we obtain the means of makinsr 
new constructions widely differing from, and superior to any- 
thing that exists in our experience, by which many important 
ends in human life are furthered. New creations of science, 
and new devices of industry, result from this power of recon- 
stituting the ultimate abstract elements of existing things. 
Even the artist will find his account in it, although it is not 
usual with him to carry abstraction so far as the man of science, 
or the man of practice. Many great poetic conceptions are 
the embodiment of an abstract idea, as in Milton's personifica- 
tion of the spirit of evil, and in many other attempts to con- 
struct characters so as to set forth some grand leading attribute 
in a manner different from anything in our experience of life. 



590 



REALIZING OF REPRESENTATION OR DESCRIPTION. 

14. What we have to state on this head is little else than 
an application of the remarks already made. When we are 
desired to conceive an object differing from any that we have 
ever known, we can only do so by constructing it out of 
qualities and particulars indicated in a representation or 
description. The machinery of representation for such an end 
is known to be very various ; including pictures, sculptures, 
models, diagrams, and greatest of all, language. If we wish 
to conceive a living human face by means of a coloured 
portrait, we require an act of constructiveness to make up the 
difference between the painting and the reality ; and for this 
purpose we must fuse or combine a living face with the 
features of the portrait till the one is completely adapted to 
the other. The difficulty lies in separating the suggestive 
part of the picture from the gross total of canvas and colour, 
and the labour is greater according as the painter has attempted 
to produce a work of art, that is, a pleasing combination of 
colour and forms. There is here that effort of analysis that I 
have already alluded to as the preliminary of many construc- 
tions, rendering them often very hard to accomplish. The 
same remarks apply to busts and sculpture in general. An 
unartistic model is the best medium for enabling the mind to 
rise to the living and actual reality of the thing aimed at. 

15. Verbal description is the most universal mode of im- 
parting to the mind new ideas and combinations; and the 
hearer or reader is called upon to put forth an effort of con- 
structiveness to realize the intended image. There is only one 
method of procedure open to the party giving the description 
— to compose the unknown out of the known, — and the hearer 
must implement the process by the force of his own mind 
bringing together the suggested particulars into a combined 
total, with the requisite inclusions and exclusions. Language 
is made the medium for indicating the things that are to be 
brought together in the formation of the new compound ; the 



MAXIM OF THE DESCRIBING ART. 591 

constituent elements being concrete or abstract as the case 
may be. 

1 6. With regard to the describing art in general, as appli- 
cable to all cases where a complex object or scene has to be 
represented to the view, the leading maxim is to combine a 
concrete or a type of the whole with an enumeration of the 
parts. This is in accordance with what has just been laid 
down respecting the best method of rising from abstract 
elements to a concrete embodiment. Some comprehensive 
designation that may spread out the main features of the object 
is indispensable to the description ; and within this the details 
may be arranged in proper form and order. The following is 
a very simple instance from Milton, which seems as if it could 
not have been stated otherwise than he has done ; but art 
shows itself in carrying into complicated cases the method that 
appears self-evident in easy cases. The words in italics mark 
the comprehensive designation or type, the rest of the descrip- 
tion giving the details: — 

They plucked the seated Mils, with all their load — 
Rocks, waters, woods — and by the shaggy tops 
Up-lifting, bore them in their hands.* 



* Carlyle's description of the town and neighbourhood of Dunbar, the 
scene of Cromwell's decisive victory over the Scotch, is rendered vivid and 
conceivable, in consequence of his always prefacing particulars and details 
by terms and epithets that are at once comprehensive and picturesque : — 

' The small town of Dunbar stands high and tvindy, looking down over 
its herring boats, over its grim old castle, now much honeycombed, on one 
of those projecting rock-promontories with which that shore of the Firth 
of Forth is niched and Vandyked as far as the eye can reach. A beautiful 
sea ; good land too, now that the plougher understands his trade ; a grim 
niched barrier ofwhinstone sheltering it from the chafings and tumblings 
of the big blue German Ocean. Seaward, St. Abb's Head, of whinstone, 
bounds your horizon to the east, not very far off; west, close by, is the deep 
bay, and fishy little village of Belhaven : the gloomy Bass and other rock- 
islets, and farther, the hills of Fife, and foreshadoivs of the Highlands, are 
visible as you look seaward. From the bottom of Belhaven Bay to that of 
the next sea-bight St. Abb's-ward, the town and its environs form a penin- 
sula. Along the base of which peninsula, ' not much above a mile and a half 
from sea to sea,' Oliver Cromwell's army, on Monday, 2d of September, 1650, 
stands ranked, with its tents and town behind it, in very forlorn circumstances. 

' Landward, as you look from the town of Dunbar, there rises, some 
short mile off", a dushy continent of barren heath hills; the Lammermoor, 



592 



CONSTRUCTIVENESS IN SCIENCE 

. 17. The Abstractions, Inductions, Deductions, and Expe- 
rimental processes of science, which we have already seen to 
be mainly dependent upon the workings of the law of simi- 
larity, afford likewise examples of Construction. 

The first in order of the scientific processes is Abstraction, 
or the generalizing of some property, so as to present it to the 
mind apart from the other properties that usually go along 
with it in nature. Thus a square in Euclid is an abstraction : in 
the world squareness is always accompanied with other pro- 
perties, making the concrete, or actual, square, — a square 
pane of glass, a square of houses, &c. We have already seen 
that the forming of these abstract ideas is generally a result 
of the identifying action expressed by the law of Similarity. 
(See Similarity, § 34.) We have now to point out a class of 
cases, where a considerable constructive effort is required in 
addition to the force of identification. There are abstractions 
of a peculiar order of subtlety, which cannot be arrived at, 
or embraced by the mind, except through a constructive 
operation, adapted to the case by much study of the parti- 
cular instances. To take as example, the abstract idea of a 
gas. Here the material eludes the senses, and cannot be 
represented by an example, or an outline; like a mountain, or 
a circle, or a genus of plants. And if the individual gases 
are so difficult to represent, there must be a similar difficulty 
in attaining an idea of the property common to them all as a 
class. A case of this nature must be circumvented. When 
we have ascertained by experiment the properties of one gas, 



where only mountain sheep can be at home. The crossing of which by any 
of its boggy passes and brawling stream-courses no army, hardly a solitary 
Scotch packman, could attempt in such weather. To the edge of these 
Lammermoor heights David Leslie has betaken himself; lies now along the 
utmost spur of them, a long hill of considerable height. There lies he since 
Sunday night, in the top and slope of this Doon Hill, with the impassable 
heath continents behind him ; embraces, as with outspread tiger-claws, the 
base-line of Oliver's Dunbar peninsula.' 

See on this subject a short treatise, by the Author, on ' Rhetoric and 
Belles-Lettres,' in Chambers's Information for the People. 



CONSTRUCTION OF ABSTRACTIONS. 593 

such as the air, we record them in the best language we can 
obtain, by comparison with the more palpable phenomena of 
solids and fluids. We find that the air is inert, and has 
weight; that it is elastic, like a spring; but that it is extremely 
light. Trying other gases we find similar properties to hold 
good. When, however, we experiment on the visible vapour 
of water, we find an absence of the elastic property belonging 
to air and invisible steam; in fact, this substance has nothing 
m common with aeriform bodies, but lightness or tenuity: 
and, in the exercise of our best discretion, we think it right 
to exclude it from the group, and embrace together only 
those that have the property of elasticity, or spontaneous 
expansion, constituting this the defining mark, or the abstract 
idea of the class. 

By a similar process of groping experiment, and the 
exercise of judgment, the scientific world has arrived at 
abstract conceptions of the subtle properties expressed by 
Heat, Electricity, Chemical affinity, Cell-reproduction, &c. 
The definitions of these attributes are constructions labo- 
riously worked out. Nevertheless, the means of effecting 
them, so far as intellect is concerned, is still by the ordinary 
laws of association, which bring up to the view various facts, 
expressions and comparisons, in order to make tentative com- 
binations ; and these are gradually improved upon, as their 
unsuitability to the particular phenomena is discovered on 
examination. An intellect well versed in the kind of con- 
ceptions necessary, and acting vigorously in the reviving of 
these by association, is naturally qualified for the work. Next 
to this, there is required a clear perception of the subject to 
be seized, for unless we are able to judge accurately of the 
fitness of the constructions proposed we shall rest satisfied 
with something far short of the truth. In every kind of 
endeavour this power of judging clearly is indispensable ; 
without it the most copious intellectual resources are wasted 
to no purpose. 

Possessing thus the material of the construction and a 
clear sense of the fitness or unfitness of each new tentative, 
there is needed nothing but patience, or as Newton termed 



594 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

it ' patient thought/ to attain the highest construction that is 
attainable in the case. This is the moral or volitional pro- 
perty of constructiveness, which I pointed out at the outset, 
as entering along with the properly intellectual forces into 
the constructive faculty. The power of patient thought, when 
highly developed, must repose upon a strong congeniality of 
mind towards the subject in hand, a passion or fascination for 
the peculiar class of ideas concerned, such that these ideas 
can be detained and dwelt upon without costing effort. The 
mathematical mind in addition to its intellectual aptitude 
for retaining and recovering mathematical forms, should have 
this congenial liking for these forms, in order to prepare it 
for original discovery. The number of trials necessary to 
arrive at a new construction is commonly so great, that with- 
out a positive affection or fascination for the subject we would 
inevitably grow weary of the task. The patient thought of 
the naturalist, desirous of rising to new classifications, must 
repose on the liking for the subject, which makes it to him a 
sweet morsel rolled under the tongue, and gives an enjoyment 
even to the most fruitless endeavours. This is the emotional 
condition of originality of mind in any department. When 
Napoleon described himself as ' un homme politique,' we are 
to interpret the expression as implying a man of the political 
fibre or grain, a character whose charm of existence was the 
handling of political combinations, so that his mind could 
dwell with ease in this region of ideas. 

1 8. What has been said above, with reference to the 
Abstractive process of science, applies also to Induction, or 
the generalizing of propositions, or truths. This may be either 
a simple effort of the reproductive force of similarity, or there 
may be wanted a constructive process in addition. In gene- 
ralizing the law of the bending of light in passing from 
one medium to another, Snell constructed a proposition by 
bringing in a foreign element, namely, the geometrical sines 
of the angles : he found that the degree of bending was as 
the sine of the inclination of the ray. This is a good example 
of the devices required to attain to a general law, and a mind 
well versed in such foreign elements, apt to revive them, and 



INDUCTION — DEDUCTION. 595 

disposed to dwell upon them, will be the most likely to succeed 
in the happy fetches and combinations that clench great 
principles of science. 

1 9. In the processes of Deduction, by which general laws 
and principles are applied to the clearing up of particular 
cases and the solving of problems, the same line of remark 
might be pursued. The mind being prepared beforehand 
with the principles most likely for the purpose, and having a 
vigorous power of similarity in that region, incubates in 
patient thought over the problem, trying and rejecting, until 
at last the proper elements come together in the view, and fall 
into their places in a fitting combination. 

The vast structure of the mathematical sciences is a 
striking example of constructiveness, as distinguished from 
the discoveries of mere identification through the law of 
similarity. In Geometry, in Algebra, in the higher Calculus, 
and in the endless devices of refined analysis, we see an 
apparatus perfectly unprecedented, the result of a long 
series of artificial constructions for the working out of par- 
ticular ends. It would not be difficult to trace out the 
course of this creative energy; the mental forces involved in 
it being no other than those that we have been endeavouring 
to explain. 

20. In the devices of Experimental science there comes 
into play a constructiveness, akin to invention in the arts and 
manufactures. The air-pump, for example, is an illustrious 
piece of constructive ingenuity. The machine already in use 
for pumping water had to be changed and adapted to suit the 
case of air; and it was necessary that some one well versed 
in mechanical expedients, and able to recal them on slight 
hints of contiguity or similarity, should go through the tedious 
course of trials that such a case required. 

PRACTICAL CONSTRUCTIONS. 

a i. The region of inventions for the practical ends of life 
might be traversed for illustrations of constructive genius. 
Likewise the department of administrative capacity in every 

Q Q 2 



596 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

class of affairs and every kind of business might be explored 
with the same view. 

Not one of the leading mental peculiarities above laid 
down as applicable to scientific constructiveness can be dis- 
pensed with in the constructions of practice ; — the intellectual 
store of ideas applicable to the special department; the 
powerful action of the associating forces ; a very clear percep- 
tion of the end, in other words, sound judgment ; and, lastly, 
that patient thought, which is properly an entranced devotion 
of the energies to the subject in hand, rendering application 
to it spontaneous and easy. 

In the case of originality in all departments, whether 
science, practice, or fine art, there is a point of character that 
is worth specifying in this place, as being more obviously of 
value in practical inventions and in the conduct of business and 
affairs, I mean an active turn, or a profuseness of energy put 
forth in trials of all kinds on the chance of making lucky hits. 
In science, meditation and speculation can often do much, but 
in practice, a disposition to try experiments is of the greatest 
service. Nothing less than a fanaticism of experimentation 
could have given birth to some of our grandest practical 
combinations. The great discovery of Daguerre, for example, 
could not have been regularly worked out by any systematic 
and orderly research ; there was no way but to stumble on it, 
so unlikely and remote were the actions brought together in 
one consecutive process. The discovery is unaccountable until 
we learn that the author had been devoting himself to experi- 
ments for improving the diorama, and thereby got deeply 
involved in trials and operations far remote from the beaten 
paths of inquiry. The fanaticism that prompts to endless 
attempts was found in a surprising degree in Kepler. A 
similar untiring energy — the union of an active temperament 
with intense fascination for his subject — appears in the cha- 
racter of Sir William Herschel. When these two attributes 
are conjoined ; when profuse active vigour is let loose on a 
field which has an unceasing charm for the mind, we then see 
human nature surpassing itself; and, with the aid of adequate 
intellectual power, the very highest results may be anticipated. 



JUDGMENT. 597 

The greatest practical inventions being so much dependent 
upon chance, the only hope of success is to multiply the 
chances by multiplying the experiments. 

The invention of Daguerre* illustrates — by a modern 
instance — the probable method whereby some of the most 
ancient inventions were arrived at. The inventions of the 
scarlet dye, of glass, of soap, of gunpowder, could have come 
only by accident ; but the accident in most of them would 
probably fall into the hands of men who had been engaged in 
extensive trials with the constituted materials. Intense appli- 
cation, — ' days of watching, nights of waking/ — in all likeli- 
hood attended ancient discoveries as well as modern. In the 
historical instances we know this to have been the case. The 
mental absorption of Archimedes is a proverb. 

22. The present topic furnishes a good ojDportunity for 
singling out for more special notice the quality of mind well 
known by the name of Judgment. I have already included a 
clear perception of the end to be served, as essential to a high 
order of constructive ingenuity, simply because without this, 
though there may be a great profusion of the requisite devices 
and suggestions towards the required combination, the fitting 
result is really not arrived at. Some combination short of 
the exigencies of the case is acquiesced in, and the matter 
rests. 

The various regions of practice differ very much in respect 
of the explicitness of the signs of success. In some things 
there is no doubt at all ; we all know when we have made a 
good dinner, when our clothing is warm, or when a wound 
has healed. The miller knows when there is water enough 
for his mill, and the trader knows when he has found out a 
good market. The end in those cases is so clear and explicit 



* The wonderful part of this discovery consists in the succession of pro- 
cesses that had to concur in one operation before any effect could arise. 
Having taken a silver plate, iodine is first used to coat the surface ; the 
surface is then exposed to the light, but the effect produced is not apparent 
till the plate has been immersed in the vapour of mercury. To light upon 
such a combination, without any clue derived from previous knowledge, an 
innumerable series of fruitless trials must have been gone through. 



598 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

that no one is deluded into the notion of having compassed it, 
if this is really not the case. But in more complex affairs, 
where perfect success is unattainable, there is room for doubts 
as to the degree actually arrived at. Thus in public admini- 
stration, we look only for doing good in a considerable majority 
of instances, and it is often easy to take a minority for a 
majority in such a case. So in acting upon human beings, as 
in the arts of teaching, advising, directing, we may suffer our- 
selves to fall into a very lax judgment of what we have 
actually achieved, and may thus rest satisfied with easy exer- 
tions and flimsily put together devices. A sound judgment, 
meaning a clear and precise perception of what is really 
effected by the contrivances made use of, is to be looked upon 
as the first requisite of the practical man. He may be meagre 
in intellectual resources, he may be slow in getting forward 
and putting together the appropriate devices, but if his per- 
ception of the end is unfaltering and strong he will do no 
mischief and practise no quackery. He may have to wait 
long in order to bring together the apposite machinery, but 
when he has done so to the satisfaction of his own thorough 
judgment, the success will be above dispute. Judgment is in 
general more important than fertility, because a man by con- 
sulting others and studying what has been already done, may 
usually obtain suggestions enough, but if his judgment of the 
end is loose, the highest exuberance of intellect is only a 
snare. 

The adapting of one's views and plans to the opinions of 
others is an interesting case of constructiveness, and would 
illustrate all the difficulties that ever belong to the operation. 
A more abundant intellectual suggestiveness is requisite 
according as the conditions of the combination are multiplied ; 
we must transform our plan into a new one containing all the 
essentials of success, with the addition that it must conform to 
the plan of some other person. There is in that case a con- 
siderable amount of moral effort, as well as of intellectual 
adaptation ; the giving way to other men's views being by no 
means indifferent to our own feelings. 

The subject of Speech in general would present some 



PECULIARITY OF THE CONSTRUCTIONS OF ART. 599 

aspects of the constructive mechanism not hitherto brought to 
light in our exposition. A fluent speaker constructing verbal 
combinations adapted to all the exigencies of meaning, 
grammar, taste, and cadence, as fast as the voice can utter 
them, is an object interesting to study in the present con- 
nexion. The sufficiently rapid action of the associating forces 
is here of prime importance. Real power is not usually iden- 
tified with a specific pace of mental movement ; a slow action 
may be as effective as a quick, but in this particular instance 
the ready revival of all the associations that concur in the 
common stream is of vital importance. 

FINE ART CONSTRUCTIONS. — IMAGINATION. 

23. The grand peculiarity of the case now to be considered 
is the presence of an emotional element in the combinations. 
In the constructions of science and practice a certain end is to 
be served — the attainment of truth, or the working out of a 
practical result. And the mind has to choose means suitable 
to those ends according to the vigorous laws of nature's 
working. A builder has to erect a structure that will defy 
wind and frost, and accommodate a certain number of human 
beings. Nothing must enter into his plan that is not calcu- 
lated to effect these purposes. The construction is considered 
a pure effort of intellect, because it is by intellect that we 
comprehend the laws and properties of stone, wood, and iron, 
and choose out and combine such materials as will serve for 
warmth and shelter. We should not properly call this opera- 
tion ' imaginative/ although there is a constructive operation 
gone through ; and that because no feeling or emotion enters in 
as an element excepting the one feeling of answering a prac- 
tical end. Yolition there is in abundance, but not emotion in 
the sense implied in the constructive processes of the imagin- 
ation. 

When, however, any practical construction, such as a 
building, in addition to the uses of shelter and accommodation, 
is intended to strike the refined sensibilities that we term the 
feeling of the beautiful, the grand, the picturesque, a turn 



600 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

must be given to the plan so as to involve this other end. 
Here we have emotion viewed in a certain narrow sense as 
exclusive of direct utility for the wants and necessities of life. 
There is a feeling of hunger, a feeling of cold, a feeling of 
fatigue, all which are emotions, but not emotions of the fine 
arts. The practical operations of life are engaged in consult- 
ing these strong sensibilities connected with the preservation 
of life itself, with present subsistence and the security of future 
subsistence ; and no other emotion ought to interfere in the 
processes for attaining these fundamental ends. The builder 
must not let a sentimental delusion in favour of one material 
blind him to the insufficiency of it for resisting the tempest 
and the cold ; this would be to let in imagination at the wrong 
place. But when what we look upon as practical ends, — the 
support of life and of healthy sensation, — are once secure, 
there are other feelings and sentiments belonging to human 
nature that can be appealed to so as to increase the sum of 
human happiness. These feelings are variously called the 
pleasures of Taste, the aesthetic sensibilities, the emotions of 
Fine Art ; and combinations shaped with the view of gratify- 
ing them are called artistic, aesthetic, or imaginative composi- 
tions. In all such compositions an element of fine emotion is 
the regulating power, the all in all of the creative effort.* 



* The following passage will aid us in working out the distinction 
between the constructions of imagination and the constructions of science 
and practice : — 

' The trains of one class differ from those of another, the trains of the 
merchant for example, from those of the lawyer, not in this, that the ideas 
follow one another by any other law, in the mind of the one, and the mind 
of the other ; they lollow by the same laws exactly ; and are equally com- 
posed of ideas, mixed indeed with sensations, in the minds of both. The 
difference consists in this, that the ideas which flow in their minds, and 
compose their trains, are ideas of different things. The ideas of the lawyer 
are ideas of the legal provisions, forms, and distinctions, and of the actions, 
bodily and mental, about which he is conversant. The ideas of the merchant 
are equally ideas of the objects and operations, about which he is concerned, 
and the ends towards which his actions are directed ; but the objects and 
operations themselves are remarkably different. The trains of poets, also, 
do not differ from the trains of other men, but perfectly agree with them, 
in this, that they are composed of ideas, and that those ideas succeed one 
another, according to the same laws, in their, and in other minds. They 
are ideas, however, of very different things. The ideas of the poet are ideas 



MENTAL TRAINS OF DIFFERENT 



EN. 601 



24. In adducing examples of combinations controlled by 
an emotional element I shall not confine myself to the 
narrowest class of artistic feelings, the feelings of Taste 



of all that is most lovely and striking in the visible appearance of nature 
and of all that is most interesting in the actions and affections of human 
beings. It thus, however, appears most manifestly, that the trains of poets 
differ from those of other men in no other way, than those of other men 
differ from one another; that they differ from them by this only, that the 
ideas of which they are composed, are ideas of different things. There is also 
nothing surprising in this, that, being trains of pleasurable ideas, they 
should have attracted a peculiar degree of attention ; and in an early age, 
when poetry was the only literature, should have been thought worthy of a 
more particular naming, than the trains of any other class. These reasons 
seem to account for a sort of appropriation of the name Imagination to the 
trains of the poet. An additional reason may be seen in another circum- 
stance, which also affords an interesting illustration of a law of association 
already propounded ; namely, the obscuration of the antecedent part of a 
train, wiiich leads to a subsequent, more interesting than itself. In the case 
of the lawyer, the train leads to a decision favourable to the side which he 
advocates. The train has nothing pleasurable in itself. The pleasure is all 
derived from the end. The same is the case with the merchant. His trains 
are directed to a particular end. And it is the end alone which gives a 
value to the train. The end of the metaphysical, and the end of the mathe- 
matical inquirer, is the discovery of truth : their trains are directed to that 
object; and are, or are not, a source of pleasure, as that end is or is not attained, 
But the case is perfectly different with the poet. His train is its own end. 
It is all delightful, or the purpose is frustrate. From the established laws 
of association, this consequence unavoidably followed ; that, in the case of 
the trains of those other classes, the interest of which was concentrated in 
the end, attention was withdrawn from the train by being fixed on the end ; 
that in the case of the poet, on the other hand, the train itself being the 
only object, and that pleasurable, the attention was wholly fixed upon the 
train ; that hence the train of the poet was provided with a name ; that in 
the cases of the trains of other men, where the end only was interesting, it was 
thought enough that the end itself should be named, the train was neglected. 

'In conformity with this observation we find that wherever there is a 
train which leads to nothing beyond itself, and has any pretension to the 
character of pleasurable (the various kinds of reverie, for example), it is 
allowed the name of Imagination. Thus we say that Rousseau indulged 
his imagination, when, as he himself describes it, lying on his back, in his 
boat, on the little lake of Vienne, he delivered himself up for hours to trains, 
of which, he says, the pleasure surpassed every other enjoyment. 

' Professor Dugald Stewart has given to the word Imagination a techni- 
cal meaning; without, as it appears to me, any corresponding advantage. 
He confines it to the cases in winch the mind forms new combinations ; or, 
as he calls them, creations ; that is, to cases in which the ideas which com- 
pose the train do not come together in the same combinations in which 
sensations had ever been received. But this is no specific difference. This 
happens in every train of any considerable length, whether directed to any 
end, or not so directed. It is implied in every wish of the child to fly, or 
to junip over the house; in a large proportion of all his playful expressions, 



602 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

properly so called, the fact being that even in the creations of 
the artist all the strong emotions may come in to swell the 
current of interest excepting only a few of the more exclu- 
sively animal feelings. Rage, terror, tenderness, egotism, are 
not . aesthetic emotions, but still the artist uses thern in his 
compositions. I should also remark that the influence of an 
emotion, while just and legitimate in the artistic sphere, 
is usually a source of corruption and bias in the combinations 
that have truth or practice for their end. This is only another 
way of saying that imagination is not to occupy the place of 
judgment and reason. 

The emotion of Terror gives a character to all the ideas or 
notions formed under the influence of the feeling. A man 
once thoroughly terrified sees only objects of dread. It is 
difficult to form any combinations free of this element. 
Ghosts and hobgoblins fill the imagination of the superstitious, 
while more substantial forms of evil haunt the mind superior 
to the dread of the supernatural. The terrified imagination is 
powerful to form creations of terror, such as may prove an 
interesting excitement to the cool spectator, but which are 
also likely to vitiate the truth of any narrative of matter 
of fact given out under the influence of the moment. 
Hence the accounts that a terror-stricken and routed army 
relate as to the numbers and power of the enemy on its heels ; 
hence the exaggerations that prevail in the public mind 
on occasions of popular panic. We see the power of an 
emotion not merely to give its own character to the concep- 
tions formed on all subjects, but to induce belief in the full 
and exact reality of such conceptions. 

With reference to examples of constructiveness of the class 



as puss in boots, a hog in armour, a monkey preaching, and so on. It is 
manifested in perfection in every dream. It is well known that, for the 
discovery of truths in philosophy, there is a demand for new trains of 
thought, multitudes of which pass in review before the mind, ;ire contem- 
plated, and rejected, before the happy combination is attained, m which the 
discovery is involved. If imagination consists in bringing trains before the 
mind involving a number of new combinations, imagination is probably 
more the occupation of the philosopher than of the poet.' — Mill's Analysis, 
vol. i., p. 181. 



PREDOMINANCE OF AN EMOTION. 603 

now cited I may repeat the remark already made, to the 
effect that no new principle of association is at work in making 
an original combination ; the only thing requisite being the 
presence or concurrence of the proper ingredients as furnished 
by the working of contiguity and similarity. When these 
ingredients appear in the mind together they fall into their 
, places as a matter of course. In the present instance, and in 
all imaginative, or emotion-ruled combinations, the laws ot 
association can be proved to be sufficient to furnish the con- 
stituents of the combination ; for we know that each strong 
feeling or passion has associated with it in the mind a large 
number of kindred objects, in consequence of the previous 
frequent companionship of such objects with the feeling. The 
passion of terror is associated in the mind with the things 
that have roused the feeling in the course of each one's expe- 
rience ; one man has associations between it and a cruel 
parent or master, another with money losses, a third with 
attacks of illness, a fourth with defamation, a fifth with 
religious workings ; and most men are familiar with a plu- 
rality of causes of dread. When therefore the feeling is once 
excited, no matter how, these often experienced adjuncts rush 
up and possess the mind, and mix themselves up with the other 
ideas of the situation so as to constitute a medley or compound 
of images with terror as the predominating tone. Seeing the 
approach of a hurried messenger with distracted countenance, 
the trader's mind is already full of disasters at sea or depres- 
sions of the market, the parent of a soldier is possessed of the 
calamities of warfare, the usurper is ready with the anticipa- 
tion of a popular rising. 

An exactly parallel illustration might be given from the 
passion of Anger. Once roused, this passion resuscitates the 
objects in harmony with it, and constitutes combinations 
wherein these enter as elements. The fanaticism of rage and 
hatred ascribes every diabolical impulse to the unfortunate 
object of the feeling; all the things that have customarily 
inspired anger are brought forward by contiguous association, 
and the instigator of the present outburst is looked on as 
guilty of innumerable crimes, in addition to the offence of 



604- CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

the moment. This is an extreme case, but not unexampled 
in the history of the world. Party-rage brands opponents 
with the most unheard-of crimes; the term calumny only 
expresses this surplus of accusation against those that have 
roused the passion of hate. 

25. The purely Egotistic feelings are remarkable for the 
superstructure of imaginative creations that they can rear. 
Self-complacency suggests merits and virtues, and constructs 
an estimate of self most flattering. Vanity sets up pictures 
of admiring assemblies and devoted worshippers. But most 
curious of all are the day-dreams of ambition in a sanguine 
temperament; these will embrace a whole history of the 
future, the baseless fabric of a vision of wonders and triumphs, 
which is not only constructed without labour, but whose con- 
struction no labour can arrest. In former sections we have 
adverted to the difficult efforts of constructiveness ; we have seen 
how hard it often is to comply with the numerous conditions 
that a construction must fulfil, or to give a place for all the 
ingredients that should be represented in it; so much so that 
the attempt may have to be repeated time after time, before 
everything will fall into the proper place. A scientific man 
framing a definition for a very comprehensive class of ob- 
jects, a mechanician constructing a new machine, a politician 
devising a state expedient, a general circumventing a hostile 
army, — will be each engaged in deliberations, for days or 
months, ere the proper combination occur to the mind. One 
suggestion includes something to be avoided, another omits 
something that ought to be present, and long delays and 
repeated substitutions and trials precede the successful termi- 
nation of the struggle. But in the case now supposed, all is 
different: stupendous constructiveness, unbounded originality, 
flow out at once as fast as thought can evolve itself. Wherein 
lies the remarkable difference in these two forms of construc- 
tiveness? The immortal crockery merchant constructed, in a 
few minutes, a lengthened fiction, totally distinct from any- 
thing he had ever seen realized in actual life. Why has emotion 
such power? The answer is simple. A predominating 
emotion, such as ambition, is every day at work associating 



FACILITY OF CONSTRUCTIONS TO SUIT A FEELING. 605 

itself with objects and incidents suited to gratify it. The 
feeling is called into play by every spectacle of power and 
grandeur that meets the eye, or is presented in story. The 
associating link is soon forged in the hot fire of passion ; and, 
after months and years of indulgence of a favourite emotion, 
a rich growth of the corresponding objects and ideas is formed 
and ready to flow out at any moment when the feeling is roused. 
Imagination, in those circumstances, becomes a power needing 
restraint, rather than an effort of laboured constructiveness. 
The foregone associations with the feeling are so copious that 
they present themselves freely for any purpose. Construction 
is easy where materials are abundant and the conditions few : 
the owner of the crockery basket had amassed pictures of 
happiness and grandeur, which required only to be cast into a 
consecutive order to make his epic, and an extempore effort 
was enough for this. The only thing he wanted was to satisfy 
one feeling, all restrictions were thrown aside, and he had 
plenty of images to suit the single emotion that lorded it over 
his dream. Very different would have been the pace of his 
execution, if he had insisted that this foreshadowing of his 
career should be in accordance with the stern experience of 
human life; if his picture should have been regulated by 
natural calculation founded on actual observation. This 
would have dried up his facility in a moment; he would then 
have been in the contrasting position above described, of the 
man of science, or the man of business ; a feeling might have 
still been the end, but purely intellectual estimates of the 
facts and laws of the world would have entered into his con- 
struction of the means. The reconciliation of his desires 
with the resources of his position would have been as arduous 
as a string of airy successes was facile. The process might 
have ever so much of the constructive intellect, and the com- 
bination might have been never so original, but the term 
' imagination' would no longer be used to describe it. 

26. The Fine Art emotions properly so called, the emotions 
of harmony, beauty, sublimity, picturesqueness, pathos, humour, 
become associated in the artistic mind with the objects that 
radiate the influence on the beholder, and from the materials 



606 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

thus stored up and reproduced by association the artist makes 
his constructions. I have in a former chapter (Contiguity, 
§ 75) adverted to the mental equipment suitable to the 
artist in any department ; and it is scarcely necessary to repeat, 
what I have endeavoured to illustrate throughout the present 
chapter, that when all the elements are present that fit into a 
particular construction they will take their places as a matter 
of course. The labour consists in getting up the constituent 
parts from the repositories of the mind, and in choosing and 
rejecting until the end in view is completely answered. Because 
the imaginations of a dreamer are easy and fluent, it does not 
follow that the imaginations of a musician, an architect, or a 
poet, shall be equally easy, although in principle the same, 
being governed by an emotion powerfully developed and richly 
associated with material. The artist has more stringent con- 
ditions to fulfil than the dreamer. He has to satisfy the 
reigning feeling of his piece, — the melody, harmony, pathos, 
humour, — of the composition ; he has also to make this effect 
apparent to the minds of others ; he has moreover to exclude 
many effects discordant to the taste of his audience ; and if his 
work be the decoration of some object of common usefulness, 
he has to save the utilities while in search of the amenities. 
Every new restriction adds to the difficulty of a combining 
effort ; and an artist may be so trammelled with conditions, 
that the exercise of imagination shall be rendered as laborious 
as any construction of the reason. To call up combinations 
that produce powerful and rich effects upon the minds of 
men is not easy in any art ; but the gathered abundance of 
the artistic intellect is the secret of the power. The more rich 
the granary of material, the more is the artist prepared to 
submit to the numerous conditions involved in a really great 
performance. 

27. I do not purpose at present to enter upon a minute 
illustration of the mental processes of art-construction. Not 
only would a large sj^ace be requisite for spreading out the 
examples in detail, but there would soon come to be involved 
a strenuous polemical discussion in consequence of the pre- 
valence of theories of art that seem to me erroneous. Con- 



FEELING THE STAND AED OF THE ARTIST. 607 

ceiving as I do that the first object of an artist is to gratify 
the feelings of taste, or the proper aesthetic emotions, I cannot 
assent to the current maxim that nature is his standard, or 
truth his chief end. On the contrary, I believe that these are 
precisely the conditions of the scientific man ; he it is that 
should never deviate from nature, and who should care for 
truth before all other things. The artist's standard is feeling, 
his end is refined pleasure ; he goes to nature and selects what 
chimes in with his feelings of artistic effect, and passes by the 
rest. He is not even bound to adhere to nature in her very 
choicest displays ; his own taste being the touchstone, he 
alters the originals at his will. The scientific man, on the 
other hand, must embrace every fact with open arms ; the 
most nauseous fungus, the most loathsome reptile, the most 
pestilential vapour, must be scanned and set forth in all its 
details. 

The amount of regard that the artist owes to truth, so far 
as I am able to judge, is nearly as follows. In the purely 
effusive arts, such as music or the dance, truth and nature are 
totally irrelevant ; the artist's feeling and the gratification of 
the senses of mankind generally are the sole criterion of the 
effect. So in the fancies of decorative art, nature has very 
little place ; suggestions are occasionally derived from natural 
objects, but no one is bound to adopt more of these than good 
taste may allow. Nobody talks of the design of a calico as 
being true to nature ; it is enough if it please the eye. ' Art 
is art because it is not nature/ The artist provides dainties 
not to be found in nature. There are, however, certain 
departments of art that differ considerably from music and 
fanciful decoration, in this respect, namely, that the basis of 
the composition is generally something actual, or something 
derived from the existing realities of nature or life. Such are 
painting, poetry, and romance. In these, nature gives the 
subject, and the artistic genius the adornment. Now, although 
in this case also the gratification of the senses and the aesthetic 
sensibilities is still the aim of the artist, he has to show a 
certain decent respect to our experience of reality in the 
management of his subject, that not being purely imaginary, 



608 CONSTRUCTIVE ASSOCIATION. 

like the figures of a calico, but chosen from the world of reality. 
Hence when a painter lays bold of the human figure in order 
to display his harmonies of colour and beauties of form and 
picturesqueness of grouping, he ought not to shock our feeling 
of truth and consistency by a wide departure from the usual 
proportions of humanity. We don't look for anatomical 
exactness ; we know that the studies of an artist do not imply 
the knowledge of a professor of anatomy ; but we expect that 
the main features of reality shall be adhered to. In like 
manner, a poet is not great because he exhibits human nature 
with literal fidelity; to do that would make the reputation of 
a historian or a mental philosopher. The poet is great by his 
metres, his cadences, his images, his picturesque groupings, his 
graceful narrative, his exaltation of reality into the region of 
ideality; and if in doing all this he avoid serious mistakes or 
gross exaggerations, he passes without rebuke, and earns the 
unqualified honours of his genius. 

28. The attempt to reconcile the artistic with the true, — 
art with nature, — has given birth to a middle school, in whose 
productions a restraint is put upon the flights of pure imagina- 
tion, and which claims the merit of informing the mind as to 
the realities of the world, while gratifying the various assthetic 
emotions. Instead of the tales of Fairy-land, the Arabian 
nights, the Romances of chivalry, we have the modern novelist 
with his pictures of living men and manners. In painting we 
have natural scenery, buildings, men, and animals represented 
with scrupulous exactness. The sculptor and the painter 
exercise the vocation of producing portraits that shall hand 
down to future ages the precise lineaments of the men and 
women of their generation. Hence the study of nature has 
become an element in artistic education ; and the artist often 
speaks as if the exhibition of truth were his prime endeavour 
and his highest honour. It is probably this attempt to subject 
imagination to the conditions of truth and reality that has 
caused the singular transference above mentioned, whereby 
the definition of science has been made the definition of art. 

Now I have every desire to do justice to the merits of the 
truth-seeking artist. Indeed the importance of the reconcili- 



LIMITS TO TRUTH ATTAINABLE IN ART. 609 

ation that he aims at is undeniable. It is no slight matter to 
take out the sting from pleasure, and to avoid corrupting our 
notions of reality while gratifying our artistic sensibilities. A 
sober modern romancist does not outrage the probabilities of 
human life, nor excite delusive and extravagant hopes, in the 
manner of the middle-age romances. The improvement is a 
most beneficial one. 

Nevertheless, there is, and always will be, a distinction 
between the degree of truth attainable by an artist, and the 
degree of truth attained by a man of science or a man of 
business. The poet, let him desire it never so much, cannot 
stud} 7 realities with an undivided attention. His readers in 
general do not desire truth simply for its own sake ; nor will 
they accept it in the severe forms of an accurate terminology. 
The scientific man has not wantonly created the diagrams of 
Euclid, the symbols of Algebra, or the jargon of technical 
Anatomy; he was forced into these repulsive elements because 
in no other way c^uld he seize the realities of nature with 
precision. It cannot be supposed that the utmost plenitude 
of poetic genius shall ever be able to represent the world 
faithfully by discarding all these devices in favour of flowery 
ornament and melodious metre. We ought not to look to an 
artist to guide us to truth ; it is enough for him that he do 
not mis-guide us. 



R R 



INDEX. 



Abstract ideas, construct! veness in 

attaining to, 592 
Abstraction, process of, 512 
Adhesiveness, natural and stimulated, 

. 355 

rate of, in heterogeneous 

association, 362 

Affection, objects of, 397 

Alimentary canal, description and sen- 
sations of, 134 

Alkaline tastes, 157 

Analogy, reasoning by, 523 

Analysis, the operation of, repulsive to 
the natural mind, 581 

Animal existence, pleasures of, 126 

Appetites, 249 

Architectural associations, 360 

Art, acquisitions in, 440 

functions of intellect in, 537 

see also Fine Art. 

Artist, qualities of, 440 

Association, obstructive, 564 

constructive, law of, 571 

Astonishment, expression of, 283 

Astringency in taste, 157 

Attention, concentration of, necessary 
in acquisition, 327 

Automatic or reflex actions, 46 

Avarice, 398 

Beauty, Alison's theory of, 398 

Bitter tastes, 156 

Brain, the principal organ of mind, 10 

classification of, according to 

Comparative Anatomy, 24 

internal structure of, 25 

plan of, as indicated by the 

arrangement of white and grey sub- 
stance, 28 

course of power in, 57 

not a sensorium, 60 



Business, acquisitions in, 439 
originality in, 526 

Causation, scientific, discoveries of, 507 
Cause and effect, successions of, 421 
Cerebellum, description of, 24 

functions of, 54 

Cerebrum, description of, 19 



Cerebrum, functions of, 53 
Circulation of the blood, feelings of, 126 
Cold, feeling of, 131 
Colour, sensation of, 236 

retentiveness for, 414 

Colours, harmony of, 237 
Command, language of, 359 
Comparisons, historical, 504 

illustrative, 530 

Compound Association, law of, 545 
Conception, see Constructive Association. 
Conception of the concrete from the 

abstract, 587 
Conjunctions occurring in the world, 

acquisition of, 414 
Consciousness, the first attribute of 

mind, 2 
Consonants, formation and classification 

of, 307 
Constructions, practical, 595 
Contiguity, statement of the law of, 318 
Contiguities, composition of, 545 
Contiguous acquisition, conditions of, 

326 
Contiguous adhesion, property of, 324 
Contrast, associating principle of, 565 
Conundrums, guessing of, 565 
Cramming, 449 

Deduction, 519 

Deduction, constructiveness in, 595 

Describing art, maxim in the, 591 

Description, realizing of, 590 

Digestion, a sense, 134 

Discrimination of differences in sensa- 
tions, 386 

Disgusts, 154 

Distance, sensation of, 242 

Diversity, influence of, in preventing 
identification of like things, 462 

Ear, description of, 196 
Electrical states, feelings of, 145 
Emotion, the first attribute of mind, 2 
delineation of peculiarities of, 



86 



— instinctive play of, 272 

— expression of, in the face, 280 

— associates with, 393 



612 



INDEX. 



Emotion, remembrance of, liable to be 
perverted, 395 

suggesting power of, 557 

— control of the intellect by, 558 



Emotions, constructiveness in, 584 

■ intellectual combinations 

ruled by, 601 
Enjoyment, physical, 107 
Ennui, 123 
Exercise, muscular feelings of, 95 

appetite for, 250 

Experimental science, constructiveness 

i"> 595 

Expression, muscles concerned in, 276 

may ari.se from the relax- 
ation of muscles, 281 

emotional, interpretation 

of, acquired, 401 

Extension, feeling of, 114 

quality of, as discerned by 

touch, 189 

meaning or import of, 367 

the result of an association 



of mental effects, 368 
External objects, acquisition of ideas 

of, 411 
Externality, the sense of, implies our 

own energies, 371 
Eye, description of, 215 
Eyes, associated action of the two, 268 

Face, movements of, 275 
Fatigue, muscular feelings of, 91 

nervous, feelings of, 123 

Feelin.L', question as to the seat of, when 

revived, 329 
Feelings, the Natural History of, 83 
Feebleness of impression preventing re- 
instatement by similarity, 456 
Fine Art constructions, 599 

nature of, 440 

emotious of, as governing in- 
tellectual combinations, 605 
standard of, 606 



Fine Arts, division of, into two classes, 

535 

"Food, materials of, 135 

Forms, outline, their cohesion in the 
mind, 352 

associated effects of, 400 

Freshness, meaning of, as applied to ani- 
mal vigour, 77 

feeling of, 1 29 

Hardness, sensation of, 186 
Hearing, sense of, 195 

■ association of sensations of, 347 

constructiveness in, 582 

Heat, feelings of, 133 
History, recollection of, 443 
Hunger, appetite of, 251 



Identities, value of, when true, 499 

real and illustrative, 501 

Imagination, 599 

Imitation, power of acquired, 405 

Induction, 514 

constructiveness in, 594 

Instinct, definition of, 256 
Instincts, 256 

■ enumeration of, 256 

Intellect, general characters that dis- 
tinguish the, 315 
Invention, in the arts, 490, 525 
Inventions, practical, 595 

mental attribute of, 596 

Irascible passion, associates with, 397 

Jddcment, the mental quality of, ex- 
plained, 597 

Lachrymal secretion, 284 
Language, revived by similarity, 475 

compound associations in, 552 

mixture of, with subject 

matter, 554 
Languages, acquisition of, 433 
Larynx, 302 
Laughter, causes of, 285 

movements in, 286 

Light, modes of reflection of, 213 

sensation of, 233 

Localization of bodily feelings, 385 
Locomotive rhythm, 262 
Lustre, sensation of, 238 

Mankind, our knowledge of, how ac- 
quired, 424 
Material world, perception and belief 

of, 370 
Mathematics, creations of, 595 
Matter, properties of, perceived through 
muscular sensibility, 117 

question as to the independent 

existence of, 370 
Mechanical acquisitions, 425 

constructiveness, 572 

Medulla oblongata, description of, 18 

functions of, 44 

Memory, assistance rendered to by simi- 
larity, 538 

historical, 543 

Mind, definition of, 1 

classifications of the phenomena of, 6 

Motion, sensation of visible, 239 
Mouth, movements of, 2 78 
Movement, feelings of a distinct class, 67 
discrimination of velocity of, 



ti6 



340 



association of feelings of, 329, 

construction of feelings of, 577 
slow, feelings of, 10 1 



INDEX. 



613 



Movements, quick, feelings of, 103 

passive, feelings of, 106 

visible enter into, intellec- 
tual imagery, '242 

theprimitivecombined, 261 

• associated or consensual, 



267 



321 



■ due to emotion, 273 

• acquisition of combined, 

- mental, perseverance of, 
421 
Muscle, structure of, 68 

sensibility of, 70 

contractility of, 71 

discriminative or intellectual 

sensibility of, 107 
Muscular tonicity, 51, 73 

tissue, 67 

system, 67 

■ sensibilities, classification of, 70 

feelings, 83 

sense, Sir William Hamilton 

on, 117 
system, law of harmony of 

state in, 270 

Naturalist, classifications of the, 496 

Nausea, 141 

Nerve force, 57 

Nerve, organic sensations of, 123 

Nerves, description of, 3r 

functions of, 37 

sentient and motor, 40 

Nervous system, 10 

substance, 13 

centres, 16 

Nose, muscles of, 278 

Odours, nature of, 158 

development of, 160 

diffusion of, 161 

action of, 163 

Oratorical acquisition, 433 
Order in Time, succession of, 550 
Organic life, feelings of a class of sen- 
sations, 120 

sensations of, 122 

Organic states, acuteness in discerning 
by the feelings, 458 

Pain, muscular, 85 

Pains, acute, their description, 87 

nervous, 123 

Past life, remembrance of each one's, 

445 
Perception, external, 362 

visible process of, 376 

Persuasion, genius for, 529 

Pictorial mind, 355 

Pons Varolii, description of, 18 



Reasoning, 512 

Reflex, or automatic actions, 46 

lleflex actions, enumeration of, 257 

Relishes, 153 

Remoteness, refining effect of, 401 

Repose, appetite for, 250 

Respiration, mechanism and feelings of, 

127 
Revived impressions, seat of in the 

brain, 333 

Saline tastes, 156 

Science, contiguity operating in, 435 

forms of, are representative, 437 

various processes of, 512 

constructiveuess in, 592 

Self-preservation, instinct of an example 

of volition, 298 
Sensation, 119 

Sensations of the same sense, associa- 
tion of, 343 
of different senses, association 

of, 359 
identification of resemblances 

among, 465 
imagining of inexperienced, 



57 9 , * 

Sense, acuteness of, 460 

Senses, 119 

, division of, into emotional and 

intellectual, 121 
Sensibility, common or general, 120 
Sensori-motor excitement, 259 
Sexes, appetite of the, 254 
Sight, sense of, 213 

sensations of, 233 

association of sensations of, 349 

superior retentiveness of, 358 

constructiveuess in, 582 

Similarity, law of, 45 1 

■ relation of, to Contiguity, 

451 



tendency of, to clear the 
mind of inconsistency, 569 
Skin, structure and functions of, 1 73 
Sleep, 250 

act of wakening from, 75 

Smell, objects of, 158 

organ of, 161 

sensations of, 164 

Solidity as a sensation of touch, 189 

sensation of, to the eye, 245 

perception of, 381 

Sound, sensations of, 202 
Sourness, 157 

Speech, acquirements of, 430 

constructiveness in, 573 

see also under Language [and 

Verbal 
Spinal cord, description of, 16 
functions of, 44 









614 



INDEX. 



Spontaneous activity, regions of, 80 

proofs of, 73 

— — of itself insuffi- 

scient to constitute voluntary power, 
291 
Spontaneous actions, confirmed by re- 
petition, 319 
Sublime, sensations connected with, 246 
Successions, acquisition of, 418 

identification among, 501 

compound associations 

among, 550 
Suffocation, 130 

Sweetness, feeling of, described, 154 
in taste, 154 

Taste, Sensations of, 152 

sense of, 147 

Tastes, intellectual aspect of, 158 

Tears, outburst of, in grief, 287 

Temperature, sensations of, 180 

Terror, objection to the stimulus of, 339 

Thirst, 126, 251 

Thought, or Intelligence, a primary 
attribute of mind, 5 

Touch, position assigned to, by Physio- 
logists, 171 

an intellectual sense, 172 

sensations of, 1 78 

power of, to substitute sight, 194 

association of sensations of, 344 

Training, mechanical, 426 

Verbal constructiveness, 573 



Verbal mind, peculiarities of, 480 
Visible aggregates,' successive growth 

of, 356 
images, circumstances affecting 

the acquisition of, 357 
Vision ; adaptation of the eye to varying 

distance, 229 

conditions of, 226 



binocular, 230 

Vocal music, acquisition of, 428 
Voice, organ of, 299 

articulate,- 306 

mental phenomena of, 309 

an organ of expression of feeling, 

3" 

supplanting tendency of, 347 

Volition, the name for true mental 

actions, 5 
delineation of peculiarities of, 

instinctive germ of, 289 

theory of, 293 

associations of, 402 

modes in which it may operate 

in resuscitating past states, 559 
an element in intellectual con- 



structiveness, 574 
Voluntary power, acquired nature of, 

402 
Vowels, utterance of, 307 

Weight, appreciation of, no 

sensation of, 185 

Winking of the eyes, 50 



THE END. 



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